
Class 
Book. 



Copyright^?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



! 



FROM TEXT TO TALK 



FROM TEXT TO TALK 

BY ADDISON BALLARD, D.D. 

author of "from talk to text," "through the sieve," 
"arrows; or, teaching a fine art." 




BOSTON 
SHERMAN, FRENCH fcf COMPANY 

1910 



BX7333 

. 13*23 F? 



Copyright, 1910 
Sherman, French & Company 



©CU268416 



As He "Calked with us by the way ; 
He opened to us the Scriptures 

Luke 24. : I 



This book is designed as a companion 
volume to the author's " From Talk to 
Text." It is taken in part from the 
author's "Through the Sieve," now 
wholly and permanently out of print. 



MOTTO AND MOTIVE 

It is a danger of serious import that 
we believe we are advanced toward per- 
fection in proportion to our knowledge 
of the way. 

FENELON 



What we most need in our religion is, 
not to be informed, but reminded. 

HANNAH MORE 



Not the advancing, therefore, of any- 
thing ' new" to be believed, but the 
urging of old and acknowledged duties to 
be done. 

THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 
I. 

Page 

I. Common Sense, Faith and 

Ignorance 1 

II. A Sure Guide and Goal .... 4 
III. Neighborliness Next to 

Godliness 8 

IV. Fullest Accord in Warfare 

and Worship 13 

V. Christianity, a Religion of 

Facts 16 

VI. Likewise 20 

VII. Contrariwise 25 

VIII. An Original Guest — The 
Lower Ennobled by the 

Higher 31 

IX. Our One Concern 36 

X. Self-Harming Haste 43 

XL The Weighing of a King ... 49 

XII. Unused Spices 54 

XIII. Reintroductions 57 

XIV. The Joy of Immediate Sur- 
render 60 

XV. The Silent Life 63 



CONTENTS 

Page 

XVI. The Cross, a Symbol of Obe- 
dience 67 

XVII. Beyond Peradventure .... 70 
XVIII. No Compromise with Tyr- 
anny 73 

XIX. Paul's Quarrel with Peter 78 
XX. The Multitude of the 

Saved 83 

XXI. A Quick Turn from Sorrow 

to Joy 86 

XXII. Satan's Fall Foreseen .... 91 

XXIII. Perfect at Last 93 

XXIV. Love's "Finally" 96 

II 

XXV. The Early Morning Outfit 

of Prayer 101 

XXVI. Gifts for Gain 105 

XXVII. Good Cheer for Darkest 

Hours 108 

XXVIII. The Broken Heart 116 

XXIX. Tenacity of Christian Pur- 
pose 127 

XXX. Giving Conscience the Ben- 
efit of the Doubt 131 

XXXI Numbering our Days 136 



CONTENTS 

Page 

XXXII. System and Sentiment in 

Giving 141 

XXXIII. The Greater of Two Great 

Victories 144 

XXXIV. Gratification and Gratitude 148 
XXXV. Intercession for the III 

Deserving 152 

XXXVI. Slander — Its Methods, Mo- 
tives and Results 154 

XXXVII. The Foolish Formalist 160 

XXXVIII Two Kinds of Religion, and 

the Better of the Two . 165 
XXXIX Heart-Reception of Jesus . 174 

XL. An Old Man's Prayer 189 

XLI. Faith's Tranquility 193 

XLII. Forward 197 

XLIII. Free to go Back, but Liking 

Better to go on 203 



COMMON SENSE, FAITH AND 
IGNORANCE 

So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast 
seed into the ground; and should sleep and rise 
night and day; and the seed should spring and 
grow up, he hnoweth not how. Mark 4: 26, 27. 

The acting out of true religion, as we find it 
unfolded in one of our Lord's parables, is made 
up in about equal parts of Common-Sense, Faith 
and Ignorance. The husbandman "casts seed 
into the ground." That is his common-sense. 
This done, he "sleeps and rises night and day," 
in full confidence that the seed will "spring and 
grow up." That is his faith. But, it is added, 
he "knoweth not how." That is his ignorance. 

For the doer of the things that most need to 
be done, this "how" is a question which may either 
be ignored or the consideration of which may be 
indefinitely postponed. Be she the veriest "fool" 
as to the chemistry of combustion, the housemaid 
"errs" not in the boiling of her tea-kettle. Be 
the husbandman ever so unversed in the philoso- 
phy of plant-growth, he is yet at no loss as to 
the plowing of his field or the sowing of his seed. 
He is not that other "fool" he would surely be 
were he either to decline or delay his farm-work 
unless he first have fully explained to him the 
scientific secret of seed-sprouting, stalk-shooting 



2 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

and ear-filling. Prompt to do his stint, he trusts 
with no distraction of doubt that his silent and 
unseen Co-Worker will do His own full share of 
their joint undertaking; that He will see to it 
that soil and sun and shower and season do each 
its appointed task. Caring less for causes than 
for results, so the outcome be sure, he will not 
stumble at the mystery of the cause. Accepting 
the established facts of farming experience, he 
goes cheerily through the whole round of summer 
toil, not puzzling himself about those hidden links 
which join his own work with the greater work 
of God. 

As is the domain of earth, so, also, is the King- 
dom of Heaven. The husbandman knows well 
what his farm duties are. We know just as well 
what our Christian duties are. We know what it 
is, first of all, to treat one another in a Christian 
way ; to do to others and to all others as we would 
have them do to us ; what it is to put envy away 
from us and to rejoice in the gifts, acquirements 
and successes of others as we would have them 
rejoice in our own; what it is to lend a helping 
heart to those in sorrow and a helping hand to 
those in need. We know what it is to love, pray 
for and forgive our enemies. Equally well do we 
know that besides these duties toward our fellow- 
men, we are to seek for a nearer acquaintance 
with God by diligent study of His Word and by 
prayer. We know that we are to pray in our 
closets and that we are to use all social and pub- 
lic helps of Christ's appointment. 



FAITH AND IGNORANCE 3 

All these are just as plain duties of the Chris- 
tian as were those in the parable of the husband- 
man. Are we practising these duties? We can- 
not but be growing Christians if we are. And 
these duties any Christian may do and be wholly 
ignorant of technical theology. No man who 
wishes to come to Christ need lose a moment's 
sleep because he cannot understand the new birth 
or reconcile foreordination with free-will. We 
may have the full and blessed benefit of prayer 
and know nothing of its philosophy. We may 
plant and water and gather precious fruit in the 
Lord's vineyard, yet know not how it is that God 
quickens the seed and gives the increase. Enough 
for us that He does bless our labor for Him and 
for souls; enough that He does bless to us the 
Word and prayer and the sacraments and fellow- 
ship of His church. We may not see it from day 
to day, but if we are doing our part faithfully we 
may rest in assured confidence that God is doing 
His, and that we are, therefore, both growing to 
the stature of perfect men in Christ and gather- 
ing fruit unto life eternal. 



II 

A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 

Looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfecter of 
our faith. Heb. 12: 1. 

When the Arctic explorer, Nansen, announced 
to the crew of the Fram his determination to quit 
the ship for good and all and push his way north- 
ward alone over the ice-fields, Petersen begged 
that he might accompany his captain on the 
journey. 

"It will be no child's play," said Nansen. "The 
journey will be one not only of severe hardship, 
but of great danger." 

"I would not think," replied Petersen, "of 
taking it alone, but with you along, I know it will 
be all right." 

The world's best framed code of morals leaves 
us stranded on the way to our strenuously sought 
goal of a perfect life as discouragingly as the 
Pram halted Nansen on his way to the Pole. In 
this crisis of our need, Jesus appears and encour- 
ages our quest with the assurance that, if we but 
follow in His steps, He will make our seeking a 
success. 

But first He would have us consider well what 
following in His steps means — the living by us 
of the same self-denying, cross-bearing life that 
He Himself lived here on the earth — a life of 
equal love to our neighbor and of supreme love 

4 



FAITH AND IGNORANCE 5 

to God ; the doing to others, in all our social and 
business relations, as we would have them do to 
us; the refusing to put fame, power, wealth or 
selfish ease or advantage before love ; the suffering 
of loss, if need be, in the maintaining of this high 
standard ; meekness under wrongs done to us ; for- 
giveness for the wrong done, and for the evil a 
return only of good; obedience to whatever it be 
God's will that we should either do or suffer. 

To live such a life as this in such a world as 
this Jesus would at the outset have us understand 
is no "child's play." On the contrary, that it 
means hardness to be endured, dangerously mis- 
leading by-paths to be shunned, rising inclina- 
tions to turn aside or turn back to be steadfastly 
resisted; a fight against disloyal doubt to be 
fought in right soldierly fashion, and fought to 
a triumphant finish. 

In a crowd the little child holds tight to its 
father's hand. In the heart of a forest the trav- 
eller fears losing sight of his guide. Like the 
child and the traveller we are all beset by dangers, 
to defend us from which we need a higher wisdom 
than our own. For those who believe in either one 
Supreme Being or many superior beings, it is the 
greatest of comforts to know that He or they are 
both ever near them and ever able and willing to 
defend them from all that is evil and bring them 
to all that is good. 

It is in this natural and universal feeling that 
idolatry, or sight-worship, has its root and, to a 



6 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

certain extent, its justification. If I can see the 
God I worship, then I know that He sees me ; that 
He takes note of my homage, beholds my offerings 
and hears my prayers. Better, a thousand times 
better, the devout idolater than the no-God atheist 
or the know-nothing-of-God agnostic. For idol- 
worship is still worship; a humble acknowledg- 
ment of dependence on divine wisdom and 
strength. As much better than atheism or agnos- 
ticism as a living tree, however disfigured by un- 
sightly excrescences, is better than a dead tree, 
however tall and shapely; better as crudest pe- 
troleum, which may yet be refined to brilliancy, is 
better than deadly gas, however scientifically pre- 
pared, which extinguishes any light over which 
it is poured. Be it that idol-worship is but a piti- 
ful mockery of the soul's deepest need, it is still 
a constant reminder of that unsatisfied need. Such 
a point of union is thus established between poly- 
theism and Christianity as easily accounts for 
the welcome which the honestly inquiring idol- 
worshipper has gladly given to those new and 
trustworthy answers of Revelation which give 
true scope and direction to the hitherto blind im- 
pulses and aspirations of his religious nature. 

What the hardships and perils of that Arctic 
expedition from the Fram would prove to be, 
Nansen himself could no more tell than could his 
would-be follower. It would be an equal risk for 
them both. 

In Jesus we have an experienced as well as a 



A SURE GUIDE AND GOAL 7 

faithful guide. He knows the way; is Himself 
the way. He knows our need; just what 
strength for whatever weakness, what support 
under whatever burden of care, what succor for 
whatever kind of temptation, what comfort for 
whatever sorrow, what courage for whatever dis- 
heartening fear. More than guide, He is also a 
companion ; eating with us the bread of whatever 
trial, tasting with us the cup of whatever afflic- 
tion. He not only feels for us; He feels with 
us. Hence the calm and fearless trust with which 
we go on to meet whatever the future may have 
in store for us, in assured confidence that we shall 
be welcomed, at last, to the joy, in heaven, of 
our faithfully followed Leader and Guide. 



Ill 

NEIGHBORLINESS, NEXT TO 
GODLINESS 

First, be reconciled to thy brother, and then come 
and offer thy gift. Matt. 5 : 23, 24. 

Wholly taken up with the decent semblance of 
religion, formalism ignores morality. Fancying 
that God is pleased with the shows of outward 
worship, the over-devout formalist feels himself 
at liberty to treat his fellow-men with a rudeness 
or injustice which upright, though perhaps 
prayerless persons would scorn to commit. Hence 
that unseemly yoking together of strenuous piety 
with sickening depravity which our Lord so aptly 
describes as "straining out a gnat and swallowing 
a camel." 

The men thus satirized by Christ were a set of 
religionists who maintained that a man might 
keep the first table of the law so punctiliously 
that he need not keep the second table at all; 
might serve God so devoutly that he could with- 
out blame hate men as cordially as he pleased; 
who imagined that they could so hoodwink God 
by bribes and flattery that He would care little 
whether or how much they abused their neighbors. 
Making the law of no effect through their tradi- 
tional glosses and false interpretations, where 
their lives did not fit God's pattern they changed 

8 



NEIGHBORLINESS 9 

the pattern to fit their lives — strangling the law 
under show of embracing it. 

In strongest opposition to these Pharisaic no- 
tions the Bible everywhere puts morality before 
what is generally termed piety; doing right be- 
fore praying; duty to our fellow-men before di- 
rect duties to God. Even in the Old Testament 
God made it to be clearly understood that He 
cares nothing for religious forms in themselves. 
"I have," He says, "forms and offerings enough 
of my own, if that were what I wanted. The 
beasts of the forest are mine, and the cattle on a 
thousand hills. If I were hungry I would not 
tell thee. . . Offer unto the Lord the sacrifices 
of righteousness." "Seek judgment, relieve the 
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
widow." "Make all right with your fellow-men, 
and after that I will make all right with you." 

In the New Testament the teaching is the 
same; only if possible more full and emphatic. 
It was by such preaching that John prepared the 
people to receive Christ. When told of Christ's 
coming and how important it was that they 
should be ready to receive Him, the people "asked 
Him saying, What shall we do then?" 

"He that hath two coats let him impart to him 
that hath none; and he that hath meat let him 
do likewise." 

"Then came also publicans to be baptized and 
said to Him, Master, what shall we do ?" 

"Exact no more than that which is appointed 

you." 



10 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

"And the soldiers likewise demanded of Him, 
saying, And what shall we do?" 

"Do violence to no man, neither accuse any." 

Thus was a pure and honorable morality the 
trumpet by which the coming of Jesus was her- 
alded to the world. 

Our Lord taught nothing more pointedly than 
that unneighborly acts are a complete bar to ac- 
ceptable worship. 

"First, be reconciled to thy brother." You 
have come bringing a gift to the altar of wor- 
ship ; to render praise, offer thanksgiving, seek 
forgiveness for your sins, drop money into the 
Lord's treasury. Before bending your knees in 
adoration, singing your hymn or making your 
contribution, you think of some unrighted wrong 
done to a neighbor — unpaid debt, unfair bargain, 
rude discourtesy, tale-bearing, kindness repaid by 
neglect, pretext of injury received when you 
were yourself the injurer. What Jesus would have 
the very first sight of His altar do for you, the in- 
tended worshipper, is to quicken remembrance of 
wrongs which it has hitherto been convenient for 
you to forget. What would He have you do? Go 
on with your worship? No; "Leave there thy 
gift before the altar." Leave it before the altar, 
but do not put it on the altar. It is a defiled gift, 
and will not be accepted. Let the prayer go un- 
said, the psalm go unsung, the money stay awhile 
in thy purse. You have come to make your ac- 
knowledgments to God; but there are other ac- 



NEIGHBORLINESS 11 

knowledgments which are more important just 
now, and which He says you must make first or 
He will not accept those made to Himself. "First, 
be reconciled to thy brother." God wants the 
first table of the law kept, but not at the expense 
of the second. He would not suffer broken tables 
to be put into His ark nor to be brought into His 
sanctuary. Whole tables must be brought in or 
none. What is technically called "religion"; 
prayer, thanksgiving, confession, are good; but 
they are not good, they are worse than useless if 
disjoined from a high-toned, rght-minded, hon- 
orable treatment of our fellow-men. Unless 
wrong done to our neighbor be righted, devotion 
of whatever kind is of absolutely no account what- 
ever in the sight of God. That wronged brother 
is also a child of God ; and would you as a father 
smile on the man who has done some grievous 
wrong to your child and who leaves the wrong 
unacknowledged? What would that be but to 
wink at the indignity and outrage? 

It may be that some who are not Chrsitians are 
saying to themselves, "That is what I like; that 
is a comfort to me." I am glad if you like it and 
glad if it is a comfort to you ; although I did not 
say it for that, but because it is true. It is a 
comfort to any man that he is not mean, selfish, 
or underhanded in his treatment of his fellows. 
It is a comfort to be tenderly, honestly, nobly 
mindful of the rights, good name, prosperity, and 
happiness of one's neighbors. And there are 



12 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

men out of the church as well as in the church 
who have this stamp of nobility and honor. 

We say to such men, You are on the right road ; 
but you have by no means completed your jour- 
ney. You need to be devout towards God as well 
as upright towards men. 

To the offender against morality Jesus does 
indeed say, "Put not thy gift on the altar." He 
does not say, "Take away from the altar thy 
gift." "Leave there thy gift before the altar and 
go thy way. First, be reconciled to thy brother" ; 
but there is a second; "Then come and offer thy 

gift." 

This explains in what sense morality is more 
important than piety. Here is an old stubble 
field, and I would sow it to wheat. Which is more 
important to be done first, sowing or plowing? 
Plowing, certainly, since without that the sowing 
would be labor lost. But I do not stop with the 
plowing. So Jesus says we must not stop with 
the strictest morality. If everything is right in 
the home, in the office, shop and store, in society, 
then I may go to Christ about my personal re- 
lations with Him. From the altar thus revisited 
I shall bear away the inward consolation of an 
accepted gift. 



IV 

FULLEST ACCORD IN WARFARE AND 
WORSHIP 

The people went up into the city, every man 
straight before him, and they took the city. Josh. 
6:20. 

And they were all with one accord, in one place. 
Acts 2:1. 

In order to win the happiest success in Chris- 
tian work, there must be both unity of action and 
freedom of action. After the walls of Jericho 
had fallen "the people went up into the city every 
man straight before him, and they took the city." 
They went up as one body. None stayed behind, 
none straggled, none shirked. Every man was 
in his place in the ranks — priest, officer and pri- 
vate ; each in his own place. It was not by a se- 
lect and privileged few that the victory was won. 
The army moved with one purpose, as though it 
were one man animated by one spirit. Yet along 
with this oneness of purpose and spirit, there was 
complete personal liberty. All went up together, 
but every man went up "straight before him"; 
every man in his own path. Every man had both 
foot-room and elbow-room. The man was not 
sunk in the mass. Each soldier fought after his 
own fashion, and on his own individual responsi- 
bility — no crowding, no interference, no damag- 
ing criticism ; no saying of one to another, "You 

13 



14 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

must grind your spear exactly as I grind mine 
and wield it exactly as I wield my own." 

And shall one follower of Christ now say to 
another, "Come under my form of church-gov- 
ernment ; fall in with my manner of worship and 
my mode of administering the ordinances, or I 
cannot recognize you as a fellow-disciple of the 
Master"? As fitly might the English at Sevas- 
topol have said to their French allies, "We would 
like your help in the taking of this fortress, but 
we cannot allow you to have any hand in the busi- 
ness ; at least, we cannot give you any recognized 
place in the lines of investment and battle, un- 
less you will consent to exchange your French 
gray for our English scarlet; unless you alter 
your Chassepot rifles into our Enfields ; unless on 
your banners you emblazon our Hon and unicorn 
over your fleur-de-lis." 

Unhindered by overawing or needless restric- 
tions, sacrificing cheerfully so much of what is 
peculiar to himself in opinion and practice as the 
best good of all may require, each hardness-en- 
during soldier of Christ will wish to go up and 
help fight his Lord's battles. But because he loves 
his brethren, also, he will wish for them what he 
desires for himself, that each of them be allowed 
to go up "straight before him," do his own share 
of the work, and win and receive his own due 
share of the reward. 

And as in warfare, so in worship. Going to 
service one Sunday morning, I was seized with a 



WARFARE AND WORSHIP 15 

pleasurable surprise as all of a sudden the city 
bells rang out with the accord of their joyous 
tones. Subdued and blended by the intervening 
hillside, some notes as of a familiar church-tune 
came to my ear. Is it the "Reformed" or "Trin- 
ity/' I at once asked myself, that has so quietly 
during the past week put a new chime into its 
old bell-tower? Listening more intently, how- 
ever, I soon distinguished the sounds of the indi- 
vidual bells of the different churches. My next 
thought was, What, after all, if the bells of ad- 
jacent churches were really tuned in groups and 
rung as a chime? Some by preconcerted arrange- 
ment pealing forth notes for the line, "How 
pleased and blest was I" ; others taking up the 
refrain, "To hear the people cry"; and others 
following with, "Come, let us seek our God to- 
day." Such a united call from all the churches, 
what a delightful sense would it give of the one- 
ness of all Christians in worship if not in creed ! 



CHRISTIANITY, A RELIGION OF FACTS 

And ye are my witnesses of these things. Luke 
24: 48. 

This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all 
are witnesses. Acts 2:32. 

Christianity has for its key-phrase, "And it 
came to pass." It is distinguished from false re- 
ligions in that it is essentially a record of events. 
It is this advantage which it has of certified nar- 
ration over uncertain speculation that gives it a 
reach which is infinitely above all that to which 
even the most profound philosophy has ever at- 
tained. Who of all the "wise and prudent" 
thinkers of all the ages is more wise and prudent 
than is Plato? Yet Plato has no story to tell us. 
It is the Athenian cult. What "all the Athenians" 
want, what "all the strangers" who have caught 
from them the spirit of mental collision and com- 
bat want, is not finalities, but new and yet newer 
things about which there can be no end of discus- 
sion — a competitive field for logical and metaphy- 
sical gymnastics. So long as St. Paul has any- 
thing to offer about which they can dispute with 
him, it is all right. They will not only argue with 
him to the "end of the chapter," but they will 
then be just as eager to begin a new chapter of 
disputation. The history of philosophy, indeed, 
has no last chapter, ending with maledictions 

16 



A RELIGION OF FACTS 17 

against any man who shall either add to, or take 
from, the words that have been already spoken. 

St. Paul does indeed have something new to 
say to these ever-inquisitive Athenians by way of 
argument, but what is vastly more to the purpose, 
he has news to tell them. He is not, from choice, 
a disputant. He is, chief of all, a reporter of up- 
to-date transactions. They listen not only pa- 
tiently, but interestedly, to the new argument 
about "the unknown god" ; but no sooner does he 
go on to clinch his argument with the news of 
Christ's resurrection, than they call him down, 
and, with their hootings and cat-calls, compel 
him to stop. 

It is the historically established fact of the 
resurrection that makes it so well worth while to 
know all else that can be known about the words 
and works of Jesus. But for His resurrection all 
else would be but little more than a matter of in- 
teresting but merely human biography. His hav- 
ing been both "raised up" and "taken up" gives 
a life-and-death significance to His whole mission 
upon earth. 

Essentially, then, Christian preachers are al- 
ways and everywhere to be evangelists — to preach 
as the Evangelists wrote — not inferences, experi- 
ences, systems or dogmas, but — facts. It is the 
"Gospel — the Good News — according to Mat- 
thew" — not according to the catechism or the 
creed. "Ye are my witnesses," says Jesus; and 
the business of a witness is to tell not what he, 



18 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

the witness, feels or infers from the facts, but the 
facts. Tell the facts. Tell them over and over 
again. Keep on telling them. Then let the facts 
speak for themselves. Let them make their own 
appeal to the minds, consciences and hearts of 
those who hear them. "It is the facts," says 
Paul to his Corinthian brethren, "in which you 
stand. It is the facts by which you are saved. It 
is the facts that you are to hold fast — the facts 
which I delivered to you, first of all, and which 
you also received — how that Christ died for our 
sins, that He was buried, and that He was raised 
again the third day; that, as an indisputable 
proof of this, He was seen of Cephas, then of the 
twelve; after that, of five hundred brethren at 
once ; that He was seen of James, then of all the 
apostles ; and, last of all, of me also." 

Some are, no doubt, at a loss to know just how 
to take St. Paul when he says that he rejoices and 
will continue to rejoice in even make-belief 
preachers of Christ ; who have only a feigned in- 
terest in what they preach. What has now been 
said makes it easy of interpretation. If there be 
a fact which it is all-important for the world to 
know, let any one tell it who will. The Tories of 
the American Revolution did not much like the 
way the war had ended. Yet. if they pretended 
to like it, and started out to spread abroad the 
good news of the peace that had been made with 
the mother country, even the most loyal of pa- 
triots would have bid them Godspeed. "Tell it to 



A RELIGION OF FACTS 19 

all the inhabitants of the land." It is what they 
want; what they need; what they are waiting to 
hear. 

"Go into all the world," is the great commis- 
sion, "and tell to every creature in it the 'good 
news' of Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from 
the dead; who, having been delivered for our of- 
fences, was raised again for our justification." 



VI 

(1) 

LIKEWISE 

And as ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye also to them, likewise. Luke 6: SI. 

Five hundred years before Christ, the great 
heathen moralist of a great heathen nation gave 
this as a complete guide for our treatment of 
others : "Never do to another what you would not 
like done to yourself." 

This does not tell us to do anything; it only 
tells us what not to do. 

The hermit keeps this rule to perfection. He 
has no "others" about him to be either hurt by, 
or to hurt. Instead of vexing himself with the 
thousand and one troublesome problems of social, 
business or religious intercourse, he thinks it 
wiser to run away from them all. Xo neighbor- 
hood squabbles for him, no peace-conferences, no 
labor-disputes, no political or church controver- 
sies, no home or foreign missionary appeals, no 
contribution-box for any cause to be passed to 
him. Such commands as "To do good and com- 
municate, forget not"; "Rejoice with them that 
rejoice and weep with them that weep"; "Look 
not every man on his own things, but every man, 
also, on the things of others" — such precepts as 

20 



LIKEWISE 21 

these have no practical meaning for him — a nega- 
tive way of keeping to a negative rule. 

Are even Christian churches and ministers in 
danger of taking this narrow, eremite view of all 
that is outside their own denominational inter- 
ests; of keeping as aloof as possible from those 
bearing other names than their own? 

In his annual Thanksgiving sermon a minister 
once gave as one cause for thanksgiving, that he 
and his people had, the past year, gotten along 
so pleasantly with the minister and people of an- 
other large, near-by, wealthy and influential con- 
gregation. Then he gave as the reason for it that 
they had had during the year so little to do with 
one another! Two near-by, yet hermit congre- 
gations. That is one way — husbands and wives, 
brothers and sisters, families, neighbors, churches, 
towns and countries, having as little to do with 
one another as possible — hermit families, hermit 
churches, hermit neighborhoods and hermit na- 
tions. 

Yet even Confucius did not advocate seclusion. 
To one who expressed the wish that he might be 
a recluse, Confucius said, "We cannot withdraw 
from the world and associate with birds and beasts 
that have no affinity with us. With whom should 
we associate but with suffering men? The disor- 
der that prevails is just that which requires our 
efforts. If right principles prevailed in the 
world, there would be no necessity for us to 
change its state." 



22 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

To shirk duty because it is hard is to play the 
coward. To do it is to act the man. We may 
avoid possible unpleasantness by living apart, but 
what we want to know is how we may live to- 
gether and live in right human fashion, too. 

The world's rule for our treatment of others is 
summed up in the one word "retaliation" — taking 
the word in its exact, literal meaning, "the like 
again" — good for good, bad for bad. The world 
regards it good legal tender if you pay a man 
back in the same coin that he has paid out to you 
— be the coin what it may. Most men, I think, 
answer their consciences fairly well if they give 
back either as good or as bad as has been given 
to them. "Whatsoever things men do to you, do 
ye to them likewise" is the way Christ's currency 
is alloyed in the world's mint. True, even our 
Lord would say that this is right, provided it is 
only kindness that is done to you. Do good to 
them that do good to you, certainly. Never 
lived another man so susceptible to kindness as 
Jesus was. Never did He forget the least kind- 
ness done to Him, and what is more, He said that 
He never would forget it ; that He would not let 
even a cup of water, given to one of His disciples 
in His name, go without its reward. Instead of 
doing more than others, that professed disciple of 
Jesus would do less than others — less even than 
the heathen — were he not to respond thankfully to 
any act, however small, of good will done to him. 
It was a heathen who had the sense to say, "You 



LIKEWISE 23 

have said everything bad of a man when you have 
called him ungrateful." 

A mere world-adviser says to a young man or 
woman just starting out in life, "Would you suc- 
ceed in either society, politics or business, you 
must, first of all, make a careful study of human 
nature. You must understand men so as to know 
how to take them; that is, how to use them for 
your own advantage; but, of course, without let- 
ting them see that they are being used in that 
way." 

Christ's teaching is immeasurably above that. 
He, too, tells us that we must study human na- 
ture. But He tells us where we are to study it, 
and for what purpose. The world's man studies 
human nature in other men to find what use he 
can make of them for building up himself. 
Christ's man studies human nature in his own 
heart ; studies to know what kind of treatment he 
himself would like in order that he may know 
what kind of treatment to give to others. "What 
shall I do for my neighbor in any particular 
case?" will be answered in a Christian way only 
when I have asked and answered this other ques- 
tion, "What would I, in like circumstances, wish 
to have him do to or for myself?" When each 
and every man shall study human nature, first of 
all, in himself, with the earnest purpose to find 
in himself a guide for his treatment of others, the 
millennium will have dawned on the world. It 
is the Golden Rule of Christ, not alloyed by over- 



4 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

weening selfishness, but 24 carats fine in practice 
that is to usher in the Golden Age. 

In a perfect society where there are only the 
pure, good, loving and true, the word "likewise" 
is all that is needed. Retaliation — the like again 
— is the law and the practice of all holy beings. 
It is in accordance with this law of holy retalia- 
tion that the education of heaven goes on, and 
that its joy is heightened and perfected. The 
worship of heaven is not individual worship 
alone; it is also a worship of immediate and lov- 
ing responses. Cherubim and seraphim not only 
cry, but they cry one to another, "Holy, holy, 
holy is the Lord God of Hosts." 



VII 

(2) 

CONTRARIWISE 

Not rendering evil for evil, but contrariwise, 
1 Pet. 3:9. 



But in this sin-troubled world of ours is a dif- 
ferent kind of experiences, calling for the appli- 
cation of a far nobler requirement, for the exer- 
cise of a far loftier spirit. A man attacks, de- 
fames, vilifies, wrongs me in any way. Now 
what am I, as a Christian, to do? Not likewise, 
but contrariwise; "not rendering evil for evil, 
nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, bless- 
ing." Here, retaliation — the like again — would 
be wholly ^christian. Here is a case where the 
superiority of Christ's man over the world's man 
is to appear, where is to be shown the advantage 
which the new nature has over the old and cor- 
rupt nature. We are not to bear such injuries 
in even equivocal silence; we are to go further 
than silence; we are to render positive good for 
real evil — to answer rudeness by courtesy, haugh- 
tiness by humility, reserve by openness, greed by 
generosity, cursing by blessing; anything low, 
base and wrong by its exact opposite. 

Christianity has this for its grand distinction 
that it begins where the best unchristianized dis- 
position leaves off. Just where the world's man 

25 



26 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

stops and beats a hasty retreat, Christ's man takes 
up his ownward and glorious march. "You have 
heard that it was said to them of old time, an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say 
unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever 
smites you on the one cheek, turn to him the other 
also. And if any man sue thee at the law and 
take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak, also. 
And whosoever shall compel thee to go with him 
a mile, go with him twain." The old Adam goes 
not a step further than he is compelled to go. 
The moment he is let go, he hastens back with all 
speed, nursing his wrath and waiting with the un- 
tiring patience of revenge for the time when he 
can compel his tormentor to go a troublesome 
mile with himself. The new Adam stops not at 
the end of the first mile, but offers of his own 
accord to go another. 

Does Jesus here deny the right of proper self- 
defence? If assailed in my property, reputation 
or life, may I not defend myself? Yes, provided 
I do it in such a way as to show, beyond a doubt, 
that the abuse has aroused in me no feeling of 
malevolent revenge ; that I have no wish to harm 
my assailant as he has to harm me. We may 
comprehend perfectly the extent of the wrong 
done to us, we may protest against it, we may re- 
buke it, but this out of no rancorous resentment 
against the wrong-doer. We are to pray for those 
who despitefully use us, that God may give them 



CONTRARIWISE 27 

a better mind. "If thy brother has trespassed 
against thee, have him arrested, at once? No, 
go and tell him his fault between you and him 
alone. If he hear thee, thou hast gained thy 
brother." It is not to vent feelings of anger; 
not to rebuke and shame the transgressor, but to 
gain him for a brother. 

As a special incentive to this duty of return- 
ing good for evil, we have the promise of a spe- 
cial blessing. Our Christian profession on this 
point will pretty surely, some time or another, 
perhaps often, be put to the test. Offences will 
come so that we will have the chance to pray for 
those that despitefully use us and persecute us. 
When that trial comes, we are to remember that it 
is sent for a divine and good purpose. It is 
Christ coming to test the genuineness of His own 
graces in us ; and this is a fact we are expected 
to know beforehand so as not to be taken by sur- 
prise: "But contrarywise blessing, knowing that 
you are thereunto called that you may inherit a 
blessing." Shall we by carnal recreancy lose the 
crown which at such a moment Jesus is ready to 
place upon our brows ? Shall we, at the very time 
of all, when that in our Christian profession is ap- 
pealed to which, perhaps more than anything else, 
is its distinctive badge and its crowning glory, 
shall we then basely falsify and dishonor it? 
Shall we with an inconsiderate and fatal ease pro- 
fess Christianity as a whole, but when the trying 
times come, take it all back, piece by piece? 



2S FROM TEXT TO TALK 

The success likely to attend the following of 
this contrariwise precept of Jesus is another en- 
couragement to its observance. It is by rendering 
good for evil that the evil is overcome. Evil can- 
not be killed by direct attack any more than Her- 
cules could kill the hundred-headed hydra by 
simply cutting off its heads. As soon as he had 
cut off one head, another started up in its place. 
Hatred has a like pertinacity of life which mere 
power, however sharply, skillfully and persist- 
ently exercised, can never subdue. By threats of 
vengeance it may be cowed for a time, but can- 
not be overcome. It can be overcome only by 
appealing to an opposite feeling. When the en- 
vier or hater brandishes his hateful sword, leave 
him to beat the air alone, while you quietly, by 
some act or word of unmistakable good-will, stir 
up whatever there may be in him of ingenuous 
shame. Get the man's own better disposition to 
fight against the worse. "Wherefore, if thine 
enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him 
drink, for by so doing you shall heap coals of 
fire on his head." It was Hercules' fire that did 
the work, and the hydra of enmity is killed not 
by vengeful decapitation, but by the caustic of 
forbearance, forgiveness and love. You heap 
coals of kindness on your enemy's head, not to 
give him pain, not as a refined and exquisite mode 
of revenge, but to burn away his ill will. 

In deliberative assemblies there are always 



CONTRARIWISE 29 

honest differences of opinion — on questions not, it 
may be, where any moral principle is concerned, 
but on questions of mere expediencey. One man 
says aggressively and defiantly, "I have taken my 
ground and I shall listen to nothing else." The 
tendency of this is to make others just as head- 
strong and unyielding, and so you have a dead- 
lock and nothing moves. Now let another man 
say, "I believe that I am right, too. I am fully 
convinced that my way is the best way. But I 
am not going to insist on its adoption against the 
judgment of a majority of my associates. For 
the sake of harmony and efficiency I am willing 
to make sacrifices." Obstinacy is at once shamed 
by the exhibition of such a spirit. Mutual con- 
cession, mutual forbearance; each esteeming 
other better than himself; in honor preferring 
one another — such is the spirit and the law of 
Christ. 

But it is in the home that most frequent occa- 
sions arise for the conflict of opposite views and 
feelings ; most frequent occasions, therefore, for 
the exercise of contrarywise forbearance. Under 
some provocation hard words are let slip. This 
provokes a retort in the same spirit. If the re- 
tort be made, it provokes the first offender still 
more, and so it goes on until the spark becomes 
a blaze. How shall that be avoided? Either by 
not replying to the harsh and hasty utterance — 
keeping "not a sullen but a serene silence" — or 
by the soft answer which turns away wrath. A 



30 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

spark or a burning coal left to itself soon goes 
out. It takes two to make a quarrel as well as 
two to make a bargain. 

It were much had Jesus only given us His beau- 
tiful, God-like precepts. But He has given us 
more. One may give me directions, orally or in 
writing, how I may go safely over a difficult and 
dangerous ground. But it were my best guide 
could I see before me the steps of one who had 
gone over it before ; so much easier is it to follow 
steps than it is to follow directions. Jesus has 
given us an example that we should "follow His 
steps." When He was reviled He reviled not 
again. When He suffered, He threatened not. 
Spitting, buffeting, mocking He bore meekly and 
silently. He dealt no answering blow, He re- 
turned no contemptuous or angry look, He ut- 
tered no counter-threat. For the scourge, the 
cross, the spikes and the spear, for wagging 
heads and cruel taunts He had only pity, forgive- 
ness and prayer. 

And it was in just this way that Jesus over- 
came the evil and that He is still overcoming it. 
So does He not keep back, but slay the enmity. 
Like Him let us also overcome. If others do us 
good, let us respond lovingly and do good to 
them "likewise." But if any do us evil, let us be 
ready, "contrariwise," with a blessing. 



VIII 

AN ORIGINAL GUEST— THE LOWER 
ENNOBLED BY THE HIGHER 

Draw out now, and bear to the governor of the 
feast. John 2 : 8. 

No matter how elaborate or abundant such an 
entertainment as that of the marriage-feast in 
Cana of Galilee might be in other particulars; 
in one particular there must be no failure — the 
wine must not give out. But it begins to be ap- 
parent at a certain stage of this banquet that it is 
likely to break down in that, as it was then re- 
garded, most important part. An ill-natured 
guest would have said unkind things about the 
slenderness of the provision. Deeply concerned 
for the reputation of the bridegroom and his 
friends, Mary applies to Jesus to help them out 
of their difficulty. He kindly supplies what is 
lacking. He not only by His presence approves 
and encourages the enjoyment of the occasion, 
but he takes up the feast when it is likely to fail 
and makes it a success. He rescues the banquet 
from the reproach which would otherwise have 
been sure to follow, and makes it honorable. He 
saves the feast from a mortifying decline and 
prolongs it in undiminished credit and enjoyment 
to the end. 

In its "beginning" the world's entertainment 
promises well. "Every man at the beginning sets 

31 



32 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

forth that which is good." Everything is bright 
and sparkling to the young. Every relation, en- 
terprise and occupation promises well at the 
start. Every new home gives promise of con- 
tentment and of pure and growing affection. 
Every scheme, ordinance or system devised by 
men for their common protection, improvement or 
happiness is full of hope in its beginning. The 
founders of dynasties, governments and institu- 
tions are grandly optimistic. But who can say 
that affairs may not take so disastrous a turn as 
to justify the forebodings of the most gloomy 
pessimist? Heraclitus bewailed with weeping the 
wickedness of men; Democritus jeered at their 
follies. But the tears of the one and the laugh- 
ter of the other spoke alike the failure of men in 
their search for a happiness that should not only 
satisfy, but endure. 

Jesus redeems life from this failure. He saves 
it from the laughter of fools on the one hand, and 
from the sneers of cynics on the other. He keeps 
it from becoming either tragedy or comedy. He 
takes up the feast where the guests were ready to 
abandon it in disgust or despair, prolongs it with 
honor and makes it a success. With Christ in his 
heart, no man need ever outlive any true enjoy- 
ment of the world. Christ in the heart keeps pure 
and fresh the Christian's love for nature, for his 
friends, for society, for literature, science and 
art. He that loves the Bible keeps relish for all 
good books. He that takes Christ with him finds 



AN ORIGINAL GUEST 33 

unabated enjoyment in all rational social festiv- 
ity. The Christian is no complainer, no misan- 
thropist, morose and soured with the world. He 
enjoys life more and longer than he does or can 
who has not Christ for a friend and fellow-guest. 
Christ is staying power to the spirit. The Chris- 
tian outstays the worldling, even at the world's 
own banqueting table. 

We are not necessarily low-lived although we 
be ever so keenly alive to that which is low. To 
be low-lived is to be satisfied with that which is 
low. It is not his fondness for eating that makes 
the glutton. It is that eating is what he most 
cares for and lives for. The enthusiastic student 
enjoys the pleasures of a well-spread table, and 
enjoys them none the less, but rather more, be- 
cause of his fondness for study. Be his relish for 
books never so keen, he is still not in the least 
ashamed to boast that he has a good appetite 
and a good cook. 

Yet, let the student, also, beware. Is he so 
wholly given to study that he begins to care less 
and less for his friends? Has the young man or 
woman away at school or college found home- 
love dying out of his or her heart? To that ex- 
tent, then, is he or she low-lived. It was of such 
a one, a favorite daughter, that a sorrowful 
father once said to me, "True, I have gained a 
scholar, but I have lost a child!" 

There is the like warning, too, for fathers and 
mothers — for fathers so devoted to business, club- 



34 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

life, or politics; for mothers so surrendered to 
the exactions of social or even philanthropic am- 
bition as to justify the children's lament: "True, 
we have gained a captain of industry, finance, let- 
ters or art; true, we have gained a society-star, 
but we have lost a father, a mother, and a home." 
To the extent of such parental neglect, such hus- 
bands, wives, fathers and mothers are low-lived. 
It is but a kind of self -degradation ; the sacrific- 
ing of a higher form of life to a lower. 

Not that there is in this the least implied cen- 
sure of any sort whatever of worldly ambition, en- 
terprise or success. God is Himself the greatest 
of legislators and rulers, of farm, forest and 
mine proprietors; of geometricians, architects 
and artists. Take a good look at "Solomon in 
all his glory," and then consider God's "lilies." 
He likes to see His children, made in His own 
image, till farms, develop mines, plan great en- 
gineering works, build dwelling-houses, ware- 
houses, ships, halls of legislation, justice, science 
and art. "Every house is built by some man." 
This is all secular, indeed ; but it is, or should be, 
much more than that. There is, or should be, a 
sacredness in it all. Such sacredness there is for 
the builder who reverently considers that "He who 
made all things is God" ; and that among the "all 
things" is the builder Himself. The crown and 
radiance of the whole world's business ambition 
and enterprise is this filial recognition of the 
Father's love. Let this thankful acknowledg- 



AN ORIGINAL GUEST 35 

ment be wanting, and God may well complain, 
"True, I have gained a husbandman, an engineer, 
an architect, a jurist, a statesman, a general, an 
orator, a financier, an artist, a scholar; but, alas, 
I have lost a child !" 

The worldling is the wedding-guest to whom 
the wine and the delicacies of the feast are all 
and all. And herein is the world's sin. 



IX 

OUR ONE CONCERN 

What is that to thee? Follow thou me. John 
21:22. 

These seven disciples are now at a standstill, 
knowing not whither to go or what to do. For 
the three years past all has been plain. They 
have been doing their work under the immediate 
direction and supervision of the Master. But, 
although He has twice appeared to them since 
His resurrection, He has given them no instruc- 
tions as to future service. Has their apostolic 
commission, then, expired? If so, will it be re- 
newed, and when? The over-strenuous Peter is 
impatient of delay. He will do what he can. 
Until there are again more men to catch, he will 
again catch fish. He does not say tentatively, 
'"Suppose we go a-fishing, then?" "I am going," 
he says, in his bold, independent fashion. The 
six f ailing in, they all start together for the lake, 
pull out from shore, drop anchor and cast the net. 
Making no catch, they row, anchor and cast 
again. They try their luck in this place and 
that, but without success. Undisciplined lands- 
men would have given up in disgust ; would have 
tumbled the limp net into the boat, pulled straight 
to shore and scattered to their homes long before 
midnight. Not so with these seven experienced 
fishermen. Too well they know the fickleness of 

36 



OUR ONE CONCERN 37 

their craft to think of farming the sea as the 
farmer farms his fields. With the fisherman's 
proverbial patience they toil through the entire 
night till the stars fade and the east reddens with 
the dawn. 

Now, looking shoreward, they see a stranger 
standing there near the water's edge. He calls 
aloud to ask whether they have anything on board 
for a breakfast. "No, we have toiled all night, 
but have taken nothing." "Cast on the right side 
of the boat and you shall find." No sooner does 
the net now settle and spread than they find it 
dropped into a school of fishes — so full, directly, 
that they cannot pull it in — not to be drawn but 
dragged. 

John has his hands on the ropes of the net 
with the hands of the rest ; but no sooner does he 
feel the weight and motion of the darting and 
struggling prey than a new thought strikes him. 
Casting a searching glance at the stranger on the 
beach, in a quick, eager undertone he says to 
Peter, "It is the Lord!" John is the first to see, 
but Peter is the first to act. "What ! the Lord, 
my Lord, my kind, forbearing, forgiving Master ! 
This is now the third time He has come to see me 
since His resurrection, and not a word, not a look 
or slightest hint has He given me about my sleep- 
ing in that sorrowful garden, or about my follow- 
ing Him afar off when His enemies were leading 
Him away, or about my again and again denying 
that He was any friend or even acquaintance of 



38 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

mine." No sooner does he catch John's words, 
" It is the Lord," than he lets go the net, 
snatches up his coat from the bottom of the boat, 
throws it on, leaps into the sea, now swimming 
and now wading to shore, leaving the six to bring 
in the loaded net as best they can, while he hast- 
ens to look once more into those dear eyes whose 
glance of mingled pity, reproof and love in the 
judgment hall there broke his unsteadfast heart 
and sent him out alone in the darkness, weeping 
bitterly. 

If Peter has a lurking dread lest that sorrowful 
and reproachful look may now be repeated, he is 
not long in discovering that such fear is ground- 
less — equally so if he has feared lest, although 
Jesus may forgive, He will never again take back 
as a trusted friend one who had proved faithless 
in the hour of such extreme trial. 

We, alas, who are ourselves so very imperfect, 
count it magnanimity if we go so far only as 
to say of one who has once shown himself incon- 
stant, "Yes, I forgive him, but I can never again 
trust him." Poor, pitiable magnanimity ! Not 
so Jesus to his once weak and erring disciple. He 
not only freely forgives him, He gives him again 
his freest and fullest confidence. He trusts and 
honors him just as completely as though Peter 
had never deserted and denied Him. Jesus does 
indeed in the most delicate way awaken Peter's 
grief by thrice asking, "Lovest thou me?" but 
when comes the appealing answer, "Lord, thou 



OUR ONE CONCERN 39 

knowest that I love thee," the appeal is at once 
followed by the thrice-given renewal of his apos- 
tolic commission, "Feed my sheep" — at the same 
time foretelling for him a life of faithful service 
to be crowned at its close with the glory of mar- 
tyrdom. 

We cannot doubt that Peter was given this 
prediction as a needed check to his naturally too 
impetuous and self-confident disposition. The 
chastened spirit with which he now follows the 
Master is in striking contrast with his once for- 
ward boast, "Though all should forsake and deny 
thee, yet will not I." Methinks he is now saying 
to himself, "Yes, my Lord is taking me at my 
old word. I said that I would die for him and 
to that test it seems I am one day to be brought." 
And feeling now his weakness more deeply than 
ever before, we are sure of the unutterable long- 
ing with which his heart goes out for that stead- 
fast strength which shall keep him henceforth 
unswervingly true and loyal to the end. 

We see, too, how entirely natural it is that on 
turning round and seeing John, he should ask, 
"Lord, and what shall this man do? Thou hast 
appointed for me the life by which I am to prove 
my love for thee and the death by which I am to 
glorify God. What is his work and his end to 
be? Shall we who have alike enjoyed privileged 
companionship with thee, who were together on 
the Mount of Transfiguration and at the Resur- 
rection-tomb, share also the martyr's doom, or 
must I alone be carried whither I would not?" 



40 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

This concern of Peter about the future of John 
our Lord sharply reproves: "If I will that he 
tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow 
thou me." 

Stumble over it as we may, the fact remains 
that God does make marked differences in both 
the lives and deaths of even his equally loved 
children. Of the eleven apostles John alone was 
spared martyrdom. Persecuted, banished, often 
in jeopardy of his life, he yet died in his bed in 
a good old age. He tarried, according to the 
foretelling, until Christ's coming to destroy 
Jerusalem — it having pleased God to set him 
apart from the rest for the honored task of com- 
pleting the canon of his revealed and written 
Word. 

An unaccountable, if not unfair, discrimination 
seems, at first view, to be made here against Peter. 
His own later warning, indeed, implies how en- 
tirely natural it is for us to wonder at the "fiery 
trial" which even the best beloved of our brethren 
are sometimes appointed to endure. Of a certain 
friend, for example, I am tempted to say, "He 
is, so far as I can see, no more of a Christian than 
am I. Why, then, should God give to him so 
much better a time, so much more honored a pos- 
ition, than he gives to me?" Who can tell? 
Health and sickness, weakness and strength, toil 
and ease, poverty and wealth, lowliness and lofti- 
ness of rank, ten talents and two — these widely 
different gifts and experiences God does either 



OUR ONE CONCERN 41 

ordain or permit. To some He gives all the 
abounding comforts of this life "and heaven be- 
sides." What concern of mine if He does? My 
course is plain. I have but to follow Christ — 
sure, if I do, that however hard and rough the 
way, it will lead to the same bright and happy 
heaven at last — brighter and happier, it may be, 
since the heavier the cross, if patiently borne, the 
richer the crown. 

Give our blind, rebellious impatience its way 
and it would make a quick average of these so 
unequally distributed gifts, attainments, pros- 
perities and adversities. Thus of one who has 
been long and signally prospered we are tempted 
to say: "Never mind; his turn will come one of 
these days!" Perhaps not. His "turn," in that 
sense, may never come at all. It may please the 
Master to give him a smooth and pleasant path 
to the very end. "What is that" to me ? Is there, 
then, such a superabundance of happiness in the 
world that I should enviously wish that there were 
less ? 

Two ambitious sons of an ambitious mother once 
asked Jesus for what they mistakenly imagined 
were the two highest honors in his gift. The 
answering rebuke and questioning test are as fit- 
ting now as they were then : "How poor and un- 
worthy is your estimate of me and of my king- 
dom! Enough, if you partake with me of this 
my cup and of this my baptism, which speak not 
of any earthly glory but only of loving service 



42 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

and sacrifice for the relieving of the suffering, the 
comforting of the sorrowing, and the saving of 
the lost." 






SELF-HARMING HASTE 

Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Acts 
16:28, 

Paul and Silas were fortunately a little too 
quick for their despairing prison-keeper. A 
second or two more and he would have made out 
of his own heart a new and bloody sheath for his 
drawn sword. Seeing the prison-doors open and 
supposing, naturally enough, that his prisoners 
had escaped, he knew that in the eyes of the law 
he was already as good as dead. Paul and Silas 
knew it, too. They would recall the old Hebrew 
usage illustrated by the soldier who said, on de- 
livering a prisoner whom he had taken in battle 
to a fellow-soldier: "Keep this man; if by any 
means he be missing, then thy life shall be for the 
life of him," as also by what Jehu said to the 
eighty men appointed to keep guard over the 
worshippers of Baal : "If any of the men whom 
I have brought into your hands escape, he that 
letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of 
him." 

As for the Roman law, the Philippian jailer 
had every reason to expect the like fate with that 
of the sixteen soldiers whom Herod a few years 
before had ordered put to death for allowing their 
prisoner, Peter, to escape. His own case, indeed, 
seemed the more hopeless of the two — punishment 



44 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

of Paul and Silas having been demanded by the 
popular fury aroused against them by the owners 
of the damsel out of whom, the day before, Paul 
had cast an evil spirit of divination; so fierce the 
mob that the magistrates, waiving the customary 
formalities of trial, had ordered them, having 
first been scourged, to be guarded with the ut- 
most vigilance in prison. Whatever milder views 
the jailer may himself have taken of the alleged 
offence, his stern sense of official duty left him 
no choice. It was, we may reasonably conclude, 
out of no "gratuitous inhumanity," but in simple 
obedience to his instructions that he thrust the two 
men into the inner prison and made their feet 
fast in stocks. 

The earthquake throb of Christ's rewarding 
love which brought joy to his two steadfast ser- 
vants filled the jailer with despair. There was 
everything to heighten his dismay — the seismic 
shock, the bewilderment which attends being 
wakened from the first sound sleep of the night, 
the darkness, and, worst of all, his seeing by the 
light he had called for that the prison-doors were 
open, compelling instant belief that the prison- 
ers whom he had been so strictly charged to keep 
had fled. Fully aware that no explanation or 
apology would avail him, in affright and despair 
he foresaw awaiting him only certain and speedy 
death. With the stern stoicism of a true Roman, 
he at once unsheathed his sword, resolved to avert 
from himself and from his friends the disgrace, 
at least, of a public execution. 



SELF-HARMING HASTE 45 

For such self-destruction the jailer's way was, 
ethically speaking, easy and open. His cons- 
cience was not of a kind to make him afraid. 
Being but a Gentile, he had none of those sixth- 
commandment scruples which would have re- 
strained a Jew. As for Roman sentiment, there 
had been no occasion to fortify himself before- 
hand by defiant membership in some city "suicide 
club." That sentiment as voiced by earlier and 
later philosophers, was on his side. "The an- 
cient sage," said Chrysippus, "had the conscious- 
ness of an invincible mind within, which placed 
him above the power of fate. He was conscious 
of an entire equality in moral elevation with Jupi- 
ter himself. He was master of his own life and 
might take it whenever he found that he could no 
longer live in a manner worthy of himself. On 
this principle many noble Romans acted, not only 
when they wished to escape from the ignominy 
of despotism, but also when disease cramped their 
powers and rendered life insupportable." The 
case is cited of a man of threescore and seven lying 
under a incurable disease who, when his physician 
wished him to take nourishment, dismissed the 
doctor with the word, "My mind is made up ;" 
upon which Pliny remarks, "I admire the spirit 
of the old man and wish I possessed it." 

It was the teaching of Pliny that "Among the 
great evils of our earthly existence the greatest 
good which God has bestowed on man is the power 
of taking his own life," and it was in this prevail- 



46 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

ing temper of sadness mixed with cold resignation 
that he encountered and fell a victim to the flames 
of Vesuvius. 

Seneca maintained that "The eternal law has 
made nothing better for us than this, that it has 
given us only one way of entering life, but many 
ways of going out of it. If thy 

mind then be melancholy and in misery, thou 
may est put a period to this wretchedness. Where- 
ever thou lookest, there is an end to it. Seest 
thou that precipice? There thou may est have 
liberty. Seest thou that lake, that river, that 
well? Liberty is at the bottom of them. Seest 
thou that little tree? Freedom hangs upon it. 
Thy own neck, yea, every vein in thy body may 
be a refuge to thee from such servitude." 

A few years only had elapsed since this stoical 
philosophy had been exemplified by the death of 
two of Rome's noblest sons on that very spot. 
After the victory of the imperial army under 
Anthony and Octavius in the battle at Philippi, 
Brutus and Cassius, who had staked the Republic 
on that single engagement, both perished by 
throwing themselves on their swords, escaping 
thus an ignominy they could neither avert nor 
bear by "flying with their hands when no longer 
able to fly with their feet." To these examples 
of desperate determination this Philippian jailer 
is about to add another, but that instantly the 
tables are turned. The warden is now become 
the ward. The two men whom he has been keep- 



SELF-HARMING HASTE 47 

ing from mob violence are now to keep him from 
self-violence and self-destruction. Seeing his 
forlorn and desperate purpose, Paul cries out with 
a loud voice and just in time to prevent the fatal 
stroke, "Do thyself no harm, for we are all here." 

Another marvel in this scene of wonders — pris- 
oners declining to be rescued and, in place of kill- 
ing the guard, preventing the guard from killing 
himself. Bent a moment ago on destroying him- 
self, the jailer is now all anxiety to know how he 
shall save himself; not for this world, but for 
that other world into which, all unprepared, he 
was about to plunge. "Sirs, what shall I do to 
be saved?" is the question which he instinctively 
feels that these two wonderful men can answer. 

When morning came, on what a scene did it 
dawn? Not on a suicide's ghastly death- wound; 
not on a widowed mother and fatherless children ; 
not on souls shrouded still in heathen doubt and 
hopelessness ; but upon a household of truth- 
enlightened, believing, baptized, saved and rejoic- 
ing disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

To be on our guard against either hasty utter- 
ance or act in time of sudden distress or danger; 
to remember that, bad as things are, they may 
not be nearly as bad as they seem ; to bear in mind 
that the "unknown being always the region of 
terror," discouragements look more discouraging 
when seen through discouraged eyes ; that things 
may be just ready to brighten when they look the 
darkest; never to forget the wrong of resorting 



48 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

to any rash, desperate, dishonest, doubtful or 
self -harming expedient for obtaining relief; to 
know that "God will not have us break into His 
councilhouse or spy out His hidden mysteries," 
but that we must wait His time with watching and 
prayer — such are the lessons embodied for us in 
the Philippian story. 

To a man bereft at a stroke of property, child- 
ren, and health, a foolish woman once said, taunt- 
ingly, "What of your God now? Curse him and 
then die and be done with it." The man did bet- 
ter. He gave to the world, instead, a world-old 
and much-needed lesson on the happiness of en- 
during. By reason of it all the generations since 
have heard of and seen two things which it would 
have been an unspeakable loss to have missed — 
"The patience of Job and the end of the Lord." 

What the Lord's beginnings may be with us 
in this world matters comparatively little since, 
as both Job and the jailer found, "His end" 
shows Him to be "very pitiful and of tender 
mercy." 



XI 

THE WEIGHING OF A KING 

Thou art weighed in the balances and art found 
wanting. Dan. 5 : 27. 

Risen at length by inheritance to the throne of 
a great empire, a monarch has presented to him 
the possibility, through right ruling, of such use- 
fulness and renown as even Gabriel might envy. 
Will he see this path of honorable fame, and, so 
seeing, will he follow it? Will he stand at atten- 
tion before the Muse of History as, pointing to 
an as yet unsullied page, she bids him fill it with 
a record of noble deeds? Will he heed those 
purer promptings of his nature which counsel him 
to live not selfishly for his own, but, self-sacrific- 
ingly , for his people's good ? Not for a few years 
of ignoble pleasure, but for an age-long term of 
worthiest recompense? Will he be instructed by 
the example of his discrowned father, who, for 
his self -idolizing pride, was smitten with lunacy, 
stripped of his royal robes, driven from the sons 
of men, his heart grown to be like the heart of a 
beast, his dwelling with the wild asses, fed with 
grass like oxen, and his body wet with the dews of 
heaven, until he should understand that the Most 
High God ruleth in the kingdom of men and that 
He appointeth over it whomsoever He will? Will 
he be the true minister of God, a terror always to 
evil works but never to the good? Will he devise 

49 



50 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

only equal and just laws and be firm and impar- 
tial in their execution? 

Here is one path bright and glorious ; sure to 
shine more brightly and gloriously to the very 
end of however prolonged a reign. 

Sadly enough, however, there is this other and 
wholly unlike path. His throne may be the seat 
of pride and obstinate self-will. Conceiving him- 
self to be raised above that strict accountability 
to which men of lower place and blood are held, 
he may drink in the flattery which is sure to whis- 
per that the throned heir of so vast an empire 
need, in shaping his course, neither to fear God 
or to regard man. Taking no counsel but of his 
own passions and caprices, he may become inso- 
lently despotic and cruelly vindictive; may abuse 
his power of patronage to gratify personal favor- 
itism and revenges, calling around him only such 
self-seeking advisers as shall keep him undis- 
turbed, both by the wrongs, miseries and protests 
of his people, and by the hidden dangers which 
menace the stability of his throne. 

Which path will this monarch choose? The 
two choices are the balances in which he is to be 
weighed and by which is to be found and declared 
what manner of man he is in his inmost heart. 
During the seventeen years of his reign the long- 
suffering Arbiter holds patiently aloft the trem- 
bling scales. Now strikes the hour when the 
Weigher lowers the beam. The weighing is 
ended, the unimproved opportunity is irrecovera- 



THE WEIGHING OF A KING 51 

bly gone. This last banquet of idolatrous mirth 
fills at once the measure of God's forbearance and 
of the monarch's guilt. No sooner is the Hand 
which has so long held the balance disengaged 
from that secret task, than it comes forth and 
writes over against the candlestick upon the plas- 
ter of the wall of the King's palace : 

"WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING." 

After the weighing, the finding. After the 
finding, the marking. 

After the marking, the irreversible doom: "In 
that night was Belshazzar slain, and Darius, the 
Median, took the kingdom." 

The desire to know beforehand the character 
and qualifications of those with whom we contem- 
plate having either social or business intercourse 
finds expression in the confident boast of practical 
phrenology. By practitioners in this so-called 
science, intelligence offices are opened in which 
the skillful manipulator of heads offers himself as 
an infallible guide to the safe selection of both 
intimate companions and associates in business. 
The attempt is thus made to put prophecy in the 
place of probation, and, by so doing, to revolu- 
tionize the world-old method for the determination 
of character, endowment and adaptation. How- 
ever sincere the attempt, it is both futile and mis- 
leading. For the clear ascertaining of such 
mental and moral values, the actual conduct of 



52 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

life is the only accurately weighing instrument. 
Opportunity is the one true test; the seeing how 
any man does what it is given him to do. In every 
home, office, shop, store, school of learning, hall 
of legislature, are poised invisible scales by which 
are silently weighed husband and wife, father and 
mother, child, brother and sister, merchant and 
clerk, capitalist and laborer, teacher and pupil, 
law-maker, judge and executive official. By im- 
provement, mis-improvement or non-improvement 
of afforded opportunity is each probationer both 
tried and made. Antecedent demonstration is 
altogether out of the question. Until thus tested 
the probationer does not himself know just what 
manner of man he is. Whether it be in the home 
or in business, the men and the women who, year 
after year, make a failure of lif e are as much an 
astonishment to themselves as they are to their 
acquaintances and friends. 

In this present lif e of ours in this way tested 
may be seen as in a mirror the lif e that is to come. 
The fleeting fashion of this world becomes the 
fixed fashion of the next. In this present scene 
of things is enclosed the germ of that spiritual 
kingdom whose issues take hold on eternity — those 
principles of moral order which must determine 
each man's place in the coming world. Our prone- 
ness to dangerous f amiliarity with the opportuni- 
ties and momentous possibilities of the everyday 
life we are now living, gives startling significance 
to the Master's words, "Notwithstanding, be ye 



THE WEIGHING OF A KING 53 

sure of this, that the kingdom of heaven is come 
nigh unto you." In the different courses and 
characters here taken and formed one sees the 
finger of God pointing silently to the awards of 
eternity. We mistake if we think of the "day of 
judgment" as the weighing day. That day is 
simply the day for declaring the result of this 
earthly trial and assigning to each man that 
"place" which he has already made "his own"; 
his final answer to the question asked day by day 
of his earthly life now ended, "Will this man 
glorify the God in whose hand his breath is and 
whose are all his ways ?" 



XII 

UNUSED SPICES 

Now, on the first day of the week, very early in 
the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing 
the spices which they had prepared. John 24: 1. 

Love is love, however blind or mistaken its 
methods. Were the "spices" which the Marys 
and the "others with them" brought to the sepul- 
chre, in sorrowing love for their buried Lord, less 
odorous or precious because not needed? 

Our careful and costly preparations for doing 
some special work for the Master may turn out 
to have been utterly wasted. We find things to 
be quite the opposite of what we expected. Health 
gives out at the very moment of intended action; 
or, through unlooked-for reverses, the means fail 
just at the last for doing what we had set our 
hearts on accomplishing. The devoted Lowrie 
goes down in the Bay of Bengal with the ship 
which is nearing the land, to bless which with his 
missionary labors he had made long and expensive 
preparation. 

A father has planned to give the best educa- 
tion he can to an only son ; but the son dies on the 
very threshold of his educational career. The 
father's generous hands are stayed and held. 

A mother makes a long and tedious journey to 
see a sick child, taking with her carefully-pre- 
pared gifts for her child's relief and comfort. 

54 



UNUSED SPICES 55 

But she has no sooner come than she is told that 
her child is no longer living. What now of the 
gifts, of which her loving hands are full? The 
dear one, on whom she is ready to bestow them, 
is no longer here to receive them. 

In what strange perplexities are we thus some- 
times overwhelmingly plunged! How inscrutable 
God's dealings with us and ours! 

But not always, and not for long, does the 
Father mean that His children shall be kept in 
harrowing suspense, nor long be balked in the 
expression of their love. Men, in shining gar- 
ments, appear to the baffled and wondering disci- 
ples with words of explanation, of promise and 
of larger hope. The love of these faithful disci- 
ples shall find expression still — only in higher, 
purer and more joyous ways. How much better, 
heart-satisfying worship of a risen and ever-living 
Saviour, than spices, however odorous and costly, 
for a dead and buried Christ ! 

It may be, instead, that the way to our in- 
tended work proves to be more open to us than 
we had at first thought. We may find the stone 
rolled away for us — an obstacle removed we could 
not have ourselves surmounted — so that we can 
enter more quickly, even than we had supposed, 
the field of our purposed deed of love. But then 
the field itself we find to be altogether abandoned. 
That on which we were about to bestow our labor 
is gone ; we know not whither. 

With God, motive governs and determines the 



56 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

reward. The motive right and pure, lamented 
mistakes turn always, in the end, to joyous sur- 
prises. 

What became of those first Sunday's spices? 
They have a precious existence still. Although 
unused, yet, like the spikenard, that was used 
before His burial, they at once took on the power 
of living and most persuasive speech. "Wherever 
this Gospel is preached," with what a tongue do 
they tell even us of the ignorance and unbelief of 
our sorrow, and of the greater, more exalted and 
more glorious scope of God's plans respecting 
Jesus and ourselves ! 

Odorous spices and beautiful flowers, if you 
will ; you who drop unbidden tears over the graves 
of your loved ones — spices and flowers and tears, 
but never, with them, words of lamentation and 
despair. Let our thoughts rather be of angels, 
in shining garments, with whom the ascended 
souls of our departed are even now walking, and 
of Jesus, who walks with them evermore by the 
banks of the river of life. 



XIII 

REINTRODUCTIONS 

And their eyes were opened, and they knew him. 
Luke 24:31. 

It is a common enough experience that an ac- 
quaintance to whom we were years ago introduced 
seems to us, after a time, so changed in manner 
or appearance that reintroduction becomes neces- 
sary to recognition. "He has grown so out of our 
knowledge" is our way of explaining it. We 
chide ourselves for our obtuse imperception, real- 
izing that the embarrassment it has occasioned us 
might have been avoided had we been more dis- 
cerning of our friend's real character, or had we 
followed more intelligently his developing pur- 
pose and career. 

John had introduced Jesus as "The Lamb of 
God that takes away the sin of the world." Jesus 
had Himself told His disciples beforehand of His 
death and resurrection as indispensable to the ac- 
complishing of this His great work. A more 
careful weighing of this foretelling, and the two 
in their walk to Emmaus on that first Lord's Day 
afternoon would not have talked to one another 
in the doubtful, sad and fearful way they did; 
they would have been spared that reproof from 
the unrecognized friend who had joined them, 
"Oh, fools and slow of heart to believe all the 
prophets have spoken," and they would not have 

57 



58 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

needed the reintroduction He gave them of Him- 
self as their risen Lord at the breaking of bread. 
His resurrection would then have been to them 
not a surprise, but an expected and joyous ful- 
filment. 

Their understanding having been thus once 
opened, we look naturally to see the disciples 
guard themselves more carefully against any 
further discounting of the promises and predic- 
tions of Jesus. For a time they do. They con- 
tinue with one accord in prayer and supplication 
for the promised Spirit. The manner of its out- 
pouring was more startling by far than was the 
manner of the resurrection. The fact of the 
resurrection was disclosed with the utmost quiet- 
ness — disclosed gradually to but a few at a time. 
Pentecost came suddenly. It came with a rush — 
a sound from heaven as of a mighty wind. Cloven 
fiery tongues appeared. Once it would have 
affrighted them to hear such a sudden rushing 
sound, and to see such tongues of fire, even had 
they been playing on the ceiling or upon the 
walls of the chamber where they were sitting. 
These forked fires came straight down from above 
and, sitting, hold their place upon the head of 
each of them. Startling indeed! Yet are they 
not in the least startled. They do not count it 
strange, but begin at once to speak with other 
tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance. Jesus 
has no need to reintroduce Himself to them as 
bountiful bestower of wisdom and power by the 



REINTRODUCTIONS 59 

Holy Ghost. Recognizing Him as their gracious 
promiser steadfastly making good to the full the 
utmost that He has promised, they begin at once, 
with no fear of failure, to speak with other and 
unfamiliar tongues as the Spirit gives them utter- 
ance. 

Peter's intelligence is now broadened enough 
to understand the risen Christ as the real subject 
of prophecy in the sixteenth Psalm ; yet he needs, 
and later on must receive, a reintroduction to 
Jesus as Saviour of the Gentiles as well as of the 
Jews. So tightly closed by Jewish bigotry had 
been both mind and mouth that both had to be 
pried open by special vision and command. Only 
then could Peter say, "Of a truth I perceive." 

Alas, that some of us should have needed, 
through our purblind "slowness of heart to be- 
lieve," so many re-introductions to God as our 
Father with all that tenderest fatherliness im- 
plies; to Jesus as our loving, heavy-laden cross- 
bearer for our sin-burdened souls, and to the Holy 
Ghost as our full and immediate Sanctifier (if 
only we will let Him be), as our Comforter under 
whatever sorrow, and as our ever-ready and faith- 
ful Guide "into all truth." 

When, if ever, shall we take it to our very heart 
of hearts, not once only, but once for all and for- 
ever, that God is all that He so fully declares 
Himself to be, that He means all that He prom- 
ises, and that all which He has promised for both 
ourselves and the world He will, even to the utter- 
most, assuredly fulfil. 



XIV 

THE JOY OF IMMEDIATE SURRENDER 

Immediately I conferred not with flesh and 
blood. Gal. 1: 16. 

Our houses were within eye-shot of one another, 
and we were back and forth in them almost every 
day. They, of the other house, were a young 
married couple. The union being every way a 
most congenial one, they were the happiest of the 
happy in their new home — a bond all the more 
strong and tender because hallowed by a common 
love to the same Saviour. His position as Uni- 
versity professor being exactly suited to one of 
his fine literary tastes, combined with a fondness 
and aptitude for teaching, gave promise of a 
long, successful and happy career. 

The thwarting of these fondly cherished hopes 
came in a wholly unlooked-for time and way. 
Soon after the birth of their second child, the 
young mother was taken with a severe pulmonary 
illness — not alarming at first, but steadily per- 
sistent and increasingly violent. The symptoms 
at length pointed to slow and remediless con- 
sumption. Although grievously concerned for 
the final result, the husband would not for weeks 
allow himself to despair of her ultimate restora- 
tion to her former unimpaired health. But, de- 
spite all that the best medical skill and the most 
faithful nursing could do, the physician was 

60 



IMMEDIATE SURRENDER 61 

forced, at length, to pronounce the case beyond 
hope of cure. 

Calling at my friend's house soon after this 
fateful announcement, he met me at the door, 
took me by the hand, and led me into a room 
apart, and while we were kneeling in prayer, 
although it was with streaming eyes and in an 
agony of grief, he then and there made a full 
surrender of that dearest treasure of his heart, 
which he acknowledged as a now sovereignly re- 
called gift of his Heavenly Father's love. 

The surrender was complete. The battle 
against doubt and dread and despair was fought 
to so clear and decisive an issue as never, even for 
a moment after, to be renewed ; victory over death 
was won, weeks in advance of its approach. The 
invalid's trust had been serene and unshaken from 
the first. Now they are one in confident assurance 
that all has been ordered in infinite wisdom 
and love. Their earthly companionship is indeed 
soon to be broken, but it will, ere long, be renewed 
in a brighter and happier sphere, never to suffer 
interruption again. 

The sick room, on which had rested the gloom 
of the husband's hitherto inconsolable grief, is 
now so brightened by his changed look and man- 
ner that friends are drawn to it by the cheerful 
greetings with which their visits are now met. The 
winter sunshine which floods the room typifies the 
confiding love which now brightens all hearts and 
faces. It is the joy of sweet and loving surrender. 
And it continues to the end. 



62 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

In an even more beautiful way the invalid 
mother evinced the reality and depth of the like 
joy -imparting surrender. The new-born child 
was sent miles away in the country to a faithful 
nurse, who was in the habit of bringing the baby 
in, every few days, for the mother to see. A friend 
suggested to the mother that this was mistaken 
kindness on the part of the nurse, owing to the 
new pain which each of these partings must give 
her. "Oh, no," she said. "I had my final parting 
with the little fellow weeks ago. I gave him up 
to God as soon as I was assured that I was not 
going to get well. The pain of parting is over; 
let the nurse bring him in as she has been doing." 

How well for us could we as God's children an- 
ticipate our appointed end by an immediate, full 
and loving surrender to Him of our whole earthly 
life and of all, even the most valued, of our 
earthly plans, ambitions, possessions and hopes. 
From the moment of such voluntary divesting 
ourselves of it, then, and then only, do we enter 
on our fullest en j oyment of the world. 



XV 

THE SILENT LIFE 

But when Jesus saw the reasoning of their 
hearts, he took a little child and set him by his side, 
and said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this 
little child in my name receiveth me. Luke 9 : 47, 48 e 

For one, I know of nothing on earth so sweetly 
hallowed, so exquisitely sacred, as the silent life 
of a little child; nothing which so directly and 
without the medium of any consciously intellectual 
process assures us of the being of God by bring- 
ing upon the spirit the hush of His over-shadow- 
ing presence. It was for those silent beatitudes 
which come only in answer to prayer that those 
far-seeing mothers who brought their little ones 
to Jesus, came asking that He would "lay His 
hands on them and pray." 

The record is not that Jesus loved and prayed 
for little children as a class, but that He took 
them in His arms, one by one, and that, one by 
one, He blessed them. He was careful to individ- 
ualize even little children; He said, "This little 
child." By so doing and saying He but repeated 
what was done and said, when His own mother 
having brought Him to the temple to do for Him 
after the manner of the law, the devout Simeon 
took Him in his arms and said, "This child is set 
for the fall and rising again of many in Israel." 

Nor of little children only is it true, this per- 

63 



64 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

sonalizing by prayer. This silent life, this deep, 
ineradicable consciousness of his affinity with the 
unseen Creator and the unending hereafter, is that 
which more than ought else individualizes each 
and every man both to himself and God; which 
assures him that he is more than an inconsiderable 
fraction, more than an undistinguishable atom of 
some huge, agglutinated mass ; that he is, instead, 
a distinct personal unit; a separate, whole, re- 
sponsible member of the family and Kingdom of 
God; as surely, as completely so, as though he 
were the only child of the family, the sole subject 
of that divine Kingdom. 

After the fight at Chattanooga those who were 
sent to bury the slain are said to have come upon 
a dead Union boy in a sitting posture — his back 
against a tree and in his lap a pocket-Bible lying 
open at the twenty-third Psalm. How, on the 
instant, does this one young man change for us 
the whole aspect of that battlefield! Before the 
battle we were thinking of the opposing armies 
only as two great wholes, as but two terribly de- 
structive machines — the sole question at issue 
being which of the two were the more likely to 
out -match, out -fight, and out-destroy the other. 
But how completely is the whole struggling mass 
now resolved into distinct and rounded personali- 
ties ; how flashed upon us the conviction that amid 
all the roar, confusion and carnage of battle, each 
soldier stands just as clearly apart to the All- 
seeing Eye as in the stillness and solitariness of 



THE SILENT LIFE 65 

the closet of secret prayer. How blessedly real 
it makes for us the fact of a close, personal rela- 
tionship to Christ, and the possibility that this 
relationship may be for each and every soul a 
union of intimate confidence; of sweet and indis- 
soluble affection. How it raises us above the 
dreary monotony of all commonest things, lifting 
each soul to the sacredness of individual fellow- 
ship with the one all-merciful Father, the ever- 
loving Saviour, the all-comforting Spirit. In- 
stead of the noun of multitude, "mankind," so 
cheerless in its vagueness and generality, how it 
gives us, in its stead, the warm, loving personality, 
giving us to Christ by our names and giving 
Christ by all His appropriate names to us ; invit- 
ing us whenever we will to turn away from all the 
neglects, injustices, envies and cruelties of the 
world, and with the upward glance of the loving 
child's confidence to say, "The Lord is my shep- 
herd; / shall not want. He leadeth me by the 
still waters. He restoreth my soul. Thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me." 

The Bible is, in this respect, just such a book 
as we might expect it to be, if it be indeed a mes- 
sage from God to us His children. 

It was the sad lament of one of the greatest of 
heathen philosophers that "God does not care for 
individual men." But we see everywhere in the 
Bible that God does care for individual men. Over 
thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis are taken 
up with the account of His dealings with Abra- 



66 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

ham; with only touches here and there of con- 
temporaneous history, and those given to illus- 
trate more fully the life and character of the 
patriarch. Over eight chapters are employed for 
the career of Jacob; over twelve for that of Jo- 
seph — thirty-three out of the fifty of which the 
book is composed. Joseph is not brought in to 
set off the grandeur of Egypt, but Egypt is in- 
troduced to show the care which God takes of 
Joseph. One whole book, and that one of the 
longest, is given to prove the regard which God 
had for one man struggling to keep his faith 
under manifold and overwhelming afflictions. 
Little is told us in that book of the arts, manners 
or politics of that day, but who has not heard of 
the "patience of Job and seen the end of the 
Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender 
mercy" ! 

So, all through the New Testament, how many 
names are given with minute relation of time, 
place and circumstance, of those whom Jesus in- 
structed, comforted and healed. Everywhere we 
see Him as a tender friend and helper, adapting 
his ministrations of mercy to the special needs of 
each separate one: "He calleth his sheep by 
name." 

The world is yet to be saved from the deper- 
sonalizing spirit of industrialism, commercialism 
and militarism by the self -integrating power of 
the silent life. 



XVI 

THE CROSS, A SYMBOL OF OBEDIENCE 

He became obedient unto death, even the death of 
the cross. Phil. 2 : 8. 

In either the true son's or the true servant's 
"What wilt thou have me to do," the stress-word 
is "what," willingness to obey being taken for 
granted, whatever the command. 

By some commands, however, the spirit of obe- 
dience is more severely tested than it would be by 
others. While "an angel would obey with equal 
alacrity, whether bidden to sweep a street or rule 
a kingdom," he might properly enough prefer 
the latter, were it his to choose. 

The voluntary surrender, if for a time only, of 
rank, riches and honor, any sound mind will, "if 
it be possible," avoid. Jesus would gladly have 
escaped making such surrender, if He could. Had 
it only been His Father's will, He would have had 
pass from Him not only the cup of Gethsemane 
and Calvary, but that also of the Bethlehem man- 
ger, of life-long poverty and dependence and of 
the servant's form. As that could not be, His 
whole life from first to last was one continuous 
act of most perfect and willing obedience. 

While, therefore, to the question, "For what 
did Jesus Christ come into the world," we have 
for the proximate and specific answer, "To save 
sinners," we also have given us, "To do the will 

67 



68 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

of God," as that ultimate and generic answer 
which the, as yet, unincarnated Christ Himself 
prefaced with, "Lo, I come." 

What the Father did was to deliver His Son 
up to the world that the world might do with Him 
as it would. There was no call or occasion for 
God to stir up the avarice of Judas, the scorn 
of the elders, the malice of the priests, the time- 
serving fear of Pilate, the fury of the mob, the 
zeal of the soldiers to the carrying out of a famil- 
iar decree of blood. He had not to depute angels 
to ply the scourge, plait the crown of thorns, put 
on the mock apparel, drive the nails or thrust the 
spear. Men were at hand ready enough, unbid- 
den and untempted, to do it all — the natural out- 
working of an enmity roused to rage by the fear- 
less preaching of God's pure truth exemplified 
and confirmed by the preacher's sinless life. 

To take one's cross, then, means the deliber- 
ately-formed determination to do one's whole duty 
at what hazard soever and at whatsoever cost — 
the extremest hazard possible being the hazard 
and loss of life itself. What the actual cost, no 
intending follower of Jesus can beforehand com- 
pute; whether a life of calm repose or whether it 
may be "given him on the behalf of Christ not 
only to believe on Him but also to suffer for His 
sake." Paul was shown, indeed, what great 
things he must suffer for the Master's sake, but it 
was only little by little as he went along. It was 
denied to Peter to know how John's career was to 



A SYMBOL OF OBEDIENCE 69 

differ from his own. Alike in fidelity, yet how 
unlike in service and in suffering — Peter crucified ; 
John dying peacefully in his bed at a good old 
age! We pledge ourselves "in blank" when we 
become followers of Christ, leaving it entirely to 
Him to fill out the lines, but ready to honor what- 
ever drafts, be they few or many, great or small, 
which He may make upon us for either service, 
sacrifice or suffering. 

In one respect the obedience of Jesus to the 
death of the cross was an obedience which He 
alone could render. For while on the merely hu- 
man side He came to his death as did Abel, Ste- 
phen and Paul to theirs — martyrs alike from the 
exasperating goodness of an unalterable purpose 
to do the will of God — yet to Jesus came a suffer- 
ing deeper by far than that caused by Cain's club, 
the witnesses' stones or Nero's sword — the agony 
and grief of a cross of expiation for the world's 
sin, the chief anguish of which lay in the hiding 
from Him of His Father's face. 

That anguish His faithful followers are 
spared. To Stephen was vouchsafed the vision 
denied to the crucified Christ. While the stones 
were raining on the martyr's head, lo, the heav- 
ens were opened and he saw Jesus standing at 
the right hand of God. That which was actual to 
Stephen, the like steadfast faith will make virtual 
to any and every obedient child of God during 
however sorrowful a life, in however painful a 
death. 



XVII 

BEYOND PERADVENTURE 

He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He hath 
set judgment in the earth. Is. 42: 4. 

Whenever and wherever are promoters or pro- 
jectors, they must use such helpers as they can 
find, whether the selected agents are well adapted 
to their purposes or not. 

Hence it is that merely human endeavors are 
so often blocked ; sometimes by the dearth, incom- 
petency or intractability of laborers; sometimes 
by the prejudice, narrow-mindedness or down- 
right opposition of those whose concurrence is in- 
dispensable to the carrying on of the work ; some- 
times by natural obstacles almost insuperable; 
sometimes, as in the digging of the Suez and 
Panama Canals, by all three obstacles combined. 
Genius, combined with unconquerable determina- 
tion, may indeed surmount these difficulties, yet, 
all the same, the difficulties do interfere with and 
delay, even although they may not ultimately de- 
feat, the triumph of the projector. 

Whenever and wherever God wants a man for 
any place or work, He has but to make him. He 
endows and trains him, brings him on the stage of 
action at exactly the right moment; then guides 
and sustains him until his work is done. "He 
knew who the man was that should deliver His 
people from Babylon, and called him by name 

70 



BEYOND PERADVENTURE 71 

scores of years before he was born, saying of Cy- 
rus, 'He is my shepherd and shall perform all my 
pleasure.' " 

The purposes and plans of God proceed under 
His wise and wide survey with harmonious con- 
vergency to the desired end; even as the Amazon 
folds in his mighty embrace all his great eddies 
and sweeps on, unhindered by them, to the sea. 

At a distance, we see rising from the threshing 
and winnowing floor only clouds of dust and 
chaff; we hear only the rumbling, rattling and 
clattering of wheels and shaken sieves. But, on 
closer inspection, we see streaming into the wait- 
ing bags the life-supporting grain. 

So it were but a narrow, starved and pinched 
conception which would lead us to find ever in the 
clamor of political controversy, in the darkening 
of the air by sectarian strife, in the mad rush and 
din of money-getting greed ; to find in any or all 
of these the slightest ground for discouragement 
to effort for the promised coming of the Kingdom 
of truth, righteousness, liberty and peace in all 
the earth. 

In the vocabulary of that Kingdom the word 
"crisis" has, therefore, no place. Critical times 
there have, indeed, been in battles, sieges, revolu- 
tions, dynasties, governments ; in the history of 
this and that movement for civic and political re- 
form; of individual churches, missions, revivals. 
The crisis once passed, there has come either prog- 
ress or decline, establishment or extinction. But 



72 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

never has there been, never will there be, an uncer- 
tain point of danger in the carrying out of the 
Divine purpose for the world's redemption. 

Rising slowly in its might, a huge wave rolls in 
from the ocean and dashes itself with a great roar 
on the beach. An inexperienced observer might 
well conclude that such a standard of energy as 
that could not long be maintained. The sea must 
sooner or later exhaust itself by such vast forth- 
putting of its power. So, for a brief interval, it 
would seem ; the next few waves being so small and 
feeble. But presently in comes another long roll 
just as grand, just as irresistible as the first. 
Watch long as we will, we discover no abatement 
in the sea's strength. Our confidence in the con- 
stancy of the vast power at work is increased 
rather, the longer we look. 

He shows himself to be but a like impatient and 
superficial observer of events who, from the occa- 
sional lessened activity of the church of Christ, 
argues the gradual exhaustion of either God's 
purpose or power to regenerate the world. Back 
of the truce with evil which He may seem at any 
time to have called, His unchanging love is pre- 
paring for new onsets and victories unmatched by 
any that have gone before. "The Mighty God," 
He is also the "Everlasting Father" ; as unweary- 
ing in His purpose as He is unwasting in His 
power. 



XVIII 

NO COMPROMISE WITH TYRANNY 

Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not a 
hoof be left behind. Ex. 10:26. 

After the plague of flies, Pharaoh proposed a 
compromise. The Hebrews might go and sacri- 
fice to their God, provided they would not in so 
doing leave the king's country. 

"No," came the prompt answer, "we must be 
allowed to go as far and in whatever direction we 
choose — out into the wilderness, a good three days' 
journey at least." 

"In that case," the king said stiffly, "you shall 
not go at all." 

After the plague of the hail, however, he 
yielded enough to say, "Well, then, name your 
terms. How many of you are going?" 

"Young and old, sons and daughters, flocks 
and herds ; we are all going," was Moses' frank 
and bold reply. 

"That will I never consent to. I will do this, 
though: I will meet you half-way. I will grant 
what I understood was all you asked for at the 
first. You men may go, but the women and chil- 
dren must stay. That is my last word." 

Locusts and three days of pitchy darkness; 
then from the king a "hurry" call for the two 
commissioners ; "I will meet you more than half- 

73 



74 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

way. Go, little ones and all ; you need leave only 
your flocks and herds." 

"No compromise," demands the man of God. 
"No meeting half-way; you must come all the 
way to meet us. 'Unconditional surrender' is the 
word. Our cattle must go too — every one of them. 
Not a hoof shall be left behind. It is all or 
nothing." 

"All or nothing" is the demand and rightful 
claim of Jesus. No half surrenders, no nine- 
tenths, no ninety-nine-hundredths compromises. 
Those who came to him hoping for easier terms 
without exception failed to find them. He at once 
discouraged the would-be follower who wanted 
first to be assured that his following would not in 
the end leave him worse off than the fox without 
a hole or the bird without a nest. To another and 
yet another on the same occasion the Master said, 
"If you propose following me, it must be without 
any 'if s' or 'buts' ; even though one 'but' be, 'Let 
me first go and bury my father'; and another, 
'Let me go first and bid farewell to them that are 
at home at my house.' " The furrow once started, 
no withdrawing the hand from the plow until the 
furrow is finished. 

That husband or father who reverses the terms 
of Pharaoh's proposed compromise and says, 
"Yes, my wife and my children may join the 
Lord's pilgrim band and welcome," while himself 
hanging back, will find that no such family con- 
cession is accepted by the Master in lieu of his 



NO COMPROMISE 75 

own personal following. It was finding that he 
could not consecrate himself to Jesus unless he at 
the same time consecrated his "great possessions" 
that caused the rich young man to go away sor- 
rowful. 

No, "not a hoof behind." Along with that 
which is most precious — our purest and deepest 
affections — we must also bring as a willing sacri- 
fice to Jesus that which is least and lowest; all 
that pertains to even our mere animal nature — so 
to eat and drink that with the temple of our 
bodies we may best glorify God. 

"A prophet like unto me." In nothing was 
Jesus more like Moses than in thus demanding 
that our whole manhood; that families, that na- 
tions, that all our business and all our gains should 
accept without reserve his provided and offered 
deliverance from the bondage of the world's sin, 
to be brought into the glorious liberty of the chil- 
dren of God. 

So distinctively is the spirit of God a spirit of 
peace and confiding gentleness that the dove, 
which is its emblem, takes readily by symbolic 
fitness to the care and protection of men. Secure 
in the house prepared for it, though it be one of 
unbarred door and open windows, it neither fears 
nor suspects harm, as it has no wish or thought 
of harming others. 

But is not this gentle, peaceable, confiding dis- 
position a constant menace to its very existence? 



76 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

Does it not make the dove an easy victim of all 
ravenous birds of prey, leaving it utterly without 
defence against the grasping claw and tearing 
beak of hawk, eagle, and vulture? Must not their 
crafty rapacity always prove more than a match 
for its unwary weakness? And must not it and 
all its kind, therefore, in time, wholly perish and, 
through "survival of the fittest," leave to the 
fierce, the unscrupulous and the devouring full 
possession of the field? 

The drift of things indicates already, and God 
is pledged to show, one of these days, beyond all 
further doubt or discussion, what that is which 
He judges fittest to survive — whether the meek, 
the gentle and the lowly, or that which from its 
stealthy perch watches for a sure moment in which 
to swoop down, seize, bear away and destroy. The 
success of hawks and vultures lies only in keeping 
themselves at a safe distance from the home-en- 
closures of men. Yet are they not by any means, 
as they complacently imagine, beyond reach al- 
ways of the fowlers eye or marksman's ball. And 
when, struck at last by the avenging bolt, the 
disturber and destroyer tumbles from his proud 
eyrie, none are sorry and all are glad. 

Year by year we see the noxious, even in na- 
ture, driven back within ever-narrowing circles, 
presaging its utter and final extinction. It may 
still have further lease of existence, but on one 
condition only — that it stop hurting: that it 
cease betraying the unsuspecting and harming the 



NO COMPROMISE 77 

helpless. There are chances ahead for the despot 
who shall see his mistake and be done with his des- 
potism ; for the envious, the malicious, the discour- 
teous, the covetous, who shall quit their envy, 
their malice, their discourtesies and their greed; 
The asp and the cockatrice may survive, pro- 
vided they no longer shoot poison from fang and 
eye, and so become harmless playmates of the lit- 
tle child. The "bear" may survive, if he can 
make up his mind to feed peaceably "with the 
cow," and the "lion," if he will learn to "eat straw 
like the ox." 

More and more relentless and persistent must 
pursuit to the death be of all wrong, outrage and 
injustice against even the weakest, most uncom- 
plaining and unresisting of our fellows — the pur- 
suit kept up unfalteringly till the last unrepent- 
ing tyrant and tormenter shall, with the last viper 
and vulture, have perished from the earth. 

In that good time coming the meek shall flour- 
ish and shall possess the land. When those who 
have kept themselves apart from their fellows in 
the selfish seclusions of place and power shall have 
been brought low, then shall room, and honor, and 
power, and plenty be given to the lowly. 

The fittest will survive. No vulture to vex 
longer the freedom of the upper sky, the whole 
wide air shall thenceforward be safe and shall 
everywhere be winnowed only by the soft wings 
of peace. 



XIX 

PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 

But when Peter was come to Antioch, I with- 
stood him to his face, because he was to be blamed. 
Gal. 2:11. 

Taking all the goodness out of the "good 
news" of salvation by grace alone, is the heresy 
against which Paul warns his Galatian brethren 
and to which he charges Peter with having once 
lent the sanction of his apostolic example. 

"You know," writes he, in effect, "how I once 
fairly hated the word 'Christian'; how mad, how 
exceedingly mad, it made me to hear it spoken; 
how fiercely I fought it ; how I persecuted and 
wasted the church of God. But when it pleased 
God, out of mercy to my ignorant unbelief , to 
show me the awful mistake I was making by re- 
vealing His Son to me and in me, I began forth- 
with to be as zealous for Christ as I had before 
been against him. Not only did I not ask author- 
ity or permission of those who were apostles be- 
fore me; I kept wholly aloof from them; acting 
as I did under orders received directly from 
Christ himself. It was three years before I even 
went up to Jerusalem, and when I did go, the only 
apostles I saw there were Peter and James, the 
Lord's brother. With the work they were doing 
in the home field I did not interfere ; did not even 
show myself to the churches of Judea. All they 

78 



PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 79 

knew about me was that I was now earnestly en- 
gaged in preaching the faith which once I de- 
stroyed. 

"It was full fourteen years before I visited Je- 
rusalem again. Then I told them the kind of free 
gospel I was preaching to the Gentiles. I told it 
to only the leading men there, and to them in the 
quietest way possible, as I did not wish to have 
my work hindered by unnecessarily antagonizing 
their Jewish prejudices. By this prudence I so 
carried my point that although Titus, who was 
with me, was a Greek, they did not compel him 
to be circumcised. The result was that the false 
brethren who come in on the sly to spy out our 
liberty which we have in Christ, and to bring us 
into bondage, could make no headway against us. 

"It was some time after this that I had my first 
and only quarrel with Peter. He had come down 
to Antioch where I then was. At first, he did as 
I did; kept company with some who were not 
Jews, and even ate with them at the same table. 
He knew, as well as I did, that there was nothing 
wrong about that. In a way, he knew it better 
than I did. He had been favored with the special 
vision of the great sheet knit at the four corners 
and let down to the earth, and word from God to 
tell him what it meant — the day's journey to 
Cesarea to tell the inquiring Centurion what he 
ought to do, 'You know,' he said, 'that it is an 
unlawful thing for a Jew to keep company or 
come to one of another nation, but God has showed 



80 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

me that I should not call any man common or un- 
clean.' In spite of that, there were some so in- 
tensely Jewish as to have censured Peter for doing 
at Antioch what he had done freely at Cesarea. 
Lingers still in the apostle some of the old timid- 
ity which led him thrice to deny his Lord in the 
judgment hail of Pilate. So afraid is he to have 
those whom James had sent down to Antioch see 
on what easy and f aniiliar terms he is living with 
outcast Gentiles, that he withdraws and separates 
himself from them. When I saw this, and saw, 
too, how other Jews, and even Barnabas, were car- 
ried away with this dissimulation, I could not let 
such a cowardly compromising of the truth go, 
and I keep still. Loyalty to Christ and His 
gospel compelled me to speak out, and I rebuked 
Peter sharply and openly. I said to him before 
them all, "If you, a Jew, live as do the Gentiles, 
why do you compel the Gentiles to live as do the 
Jews? Jews, as you and I are, we are now en- 
lightened enough to know that a man is not jus- 
tified by the works of the law, but by the faith of 
Jesus Christ. For my part, I am ready to say al- 
ways, and everywhere, that this grace, this gift 
of God, through His Son, is my sole reliance for 
pardon and salvation. I do not frustrate this 
grace : do not set it aside, and so dishonor it by 
putting a particle of trust in anything else what- 
soever.' " 

Penance is a false and blind substitute for re- 
pentance. It is misleading and mischievously op- 



PAUL'S QUARREL WITH PETER 81 

posed to the idea and fact of that free, full, im- 
mediate and unrevocable forgiveness by which 
true repentance is invariably followed. This, 
whether the penance take the form of wearing 
coarse clothes, ascetic abstinence from personal 
adornment, going barefoot, fasting, flagellation, 
or singularity of speech, dress or manners. 

When the self -exiled, home-deserting son came 
to consider the great wrong he had been doing 
and had at last determined to do the best he could 
to make it right with his father, and when he 
went back and said frankly, "Father, I know that 
I have been doing wrong since I left you," what 
did the father say? Did he say, "My boy, you 
had good clothes on when you left home ; here you 
are back in tatters. Wear your rags awhile 
longer that all may see what prodigality brings a 
young man to in the long run. Where is the ring 
I made you a present of at your last birthday? I 
buy no more jewelry for the pawn-shop. You 
went away well-shod ; you come home barefoot. It 
will be a good reminder to go barefoot awhile 
longer. You always had a bountiful table to sit 
down at here at home. You ran yourself down 
and out until at last you had only husks to eat 
and only swine for messmates, and nobody to care 
whether you ever had anything better or not. I 
prescribe for a few weeks, by way of probation, a 
diet of bread and water." 

Was that the way the father did? For rags, 
instead, it was a robe, and that of the very best. 



82 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

For the empty hand that had been throwing 
husks to the swine, a ring. For the bare and 
bruised feet, shoes. For fasting, feasting; for 
gloom, gladness ; for misery, merriment ; for 
moans, music and dancing. 

What the father would say or do to him in 
case he should return, the now penitent son did 
not know. But that was not for the son to con- 
sider. One thing he could do, and it was all he 
could do. He could go back to his father's house. 
One thing he could say, and it was all he could 
say : "Father, I have sinned." However it might 
turn out, he would do his part, leaving it to his 
father to do as he would. 

Feeling as he did, I think that the son would 
have come back, even had he counted on being re- 
proved and perhaps repulsed by his injured 
father. Certainly he was not prepared for the 
welcome that followed — the kiss, the ring, the best 
robe, the feast — all to express the father's glad- 
ness for his boy's return. 

God give to these poor, hesitant, doubting, 
fearful hearts of ours to see deeper down than we 
have ever yet seen into the unsearchable depths 
of the Father's ever-welcoming, freely-forgiving, 
guilt-removing love. 



XX 

THE MULTITUDE OF THE SAVED 

A great multitude whom no man could number. 
Rev. 7:9. 

It is both comforting and inspiring to note the 
different ways in which the earth's population 
and the population of heaven are increased. 

Here, one goes out of the world almost as fast 
as another comes into it. Had it been all entrance 
and no exit, the globe's population, like the corn 
which Joseph gathered in Egypt, had long since 
exceeded the limit of practical notation. As it 
is, decrease by death keeps almost even pace with 
increase by birth. The most healthful city out- 
grows but slowly the enclosures of its dead. 
Through war, famine, pestilence, earthquake, vol- 
cano, fire or flood, the ratios may be so sadly and 
suddenly reversed that, as in Martinique, it be- 
comes easier to count the living than the dead. 
While it may have taxed an antediluvian states- 
man's power of computation to sum that old 
world's population, a child now needs but his 
"eight" fingers to tell how many souls were then 
"saved by water." To know at any nightfall the 
aggregate of the earth's inhabitants, we must 
take from that day's census of the newly come, 
the evening list of the newly gone. 

But, thanks be to the Love which we know has 
provided it, there is another world — another and 

83 



84 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

a better. Were it not so, He who knows both 
worlds would surely have "told" us. In that world 
whosoever comes, comes to stay — no departing 
and hence no parting ; no cemetery census there to 
be subtracted from that fair city's ever-growing 
population; no name ever dropped from that 
heavenly directory, the Lamb's Book of Life ; the 
new heaven, new in that it is convulsed by no hur- 
ricane, cyclone, tempest or tornado ; the new earth, 
new in that no life is ever lost by sickness, earth- 
quake, volcano, fire or flood. 

Now and then an earthly monarch sees with 
alarm that the population of his empire has come 
to a stand-still. Never so with our Immanuel's 
Kingdom. It is ever and forever on the increase ; 
a Kingdom of which there is no more an end of 
souls than of years. About this wonderful expan- 
sion St. John the Divine had in Patmos his once 
narrow notions wonderfully expanded. He 
"heard," but what he afterward "saw" was in- 
finitely more than what he had heard. What he 
heard was but "a number"; the number of "all" 
that were "sealed of the tribes of the children of 
Israel." That exact calculation of the chosen, the 
covenant people of God, is as far as at one time 
even the "beloved disciple" would have gone, had 
he like Jesus been asked, "Are there few that be 
saved"? But after this numerical hearing the 
Revelator sees — and lo, "a great multitude whom 
no man could number of all nations and kindreds 
and people and tongues standing before the 



MULTITUDE OF THE SAVED 85 

throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white 
robes and palms in their hands and crying with a 
loud voice, 'Salvation to our God which sitteth 
upon the throne and unto the Lamb.' " 



XXI 

A QUICK TURN FROM SORROW TO JOY 

And they departed quickly from the sepulchre 
•with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his 
disciples word. Matt. 28:8. 

On their way to the sepulchre the two Marys 
are walking together in the same dark shadow 
that from the beginning has shrouded the hearts 
of mourners visiting the last resting-places of 
their dead. They go, looking to find all at the 
tomb as they saw it left by Joseph and Nicode- 
mus on the preceding Friday afternoon. It is as 
quiet as it was then, but in all else how changed ! 
The stone lying at a distance away and, where it 
had stood, a black open doorway instead. The 
accustomed signs of death are gone. Can it be 
that they had missed the way; that they have 
come to the wrong spot, as is not unfrequently 
the case amid the intricate windings of a mod- 
ern city cemetery? No, they cannot have mis- 
taken either the path or the place. The path from 
Jerusalem is both short and plain. The sepul- 
chre is by itself, in a private garden. The place 
and its surroundings are recognized as soon as 
seen; the same stone-hewn vault, the same rocky 
shelf on which they saw tenderly laid the lifeless 
body of their Lord. Here lay His head, and there 
His feet. But there where lay His feet are now 
only the linen bandages in which the body was 

86 



FROM SORROW TO JOY 87 

wound, and here wrapped together in a place by 
itself is the napkin that was about His head. 
Even the silence is changed; more profound and 
painful than it would be were the body still here. 
At this so strangely altered appearance the two 
friends are most deeply and painfully perplexed 
— the perplexity soon turns to affright as close 
beside them is suddenly seen standing, with light- 
ning-like countenance and snow-white apparel, an 
angel of the Lord. Falling upon their knees they 
lean forward, bowing their faces in terror to the 
ground. 

From this terrified suspense they are quickly 
relieved, however, by the loving tones of the an- 
gel's voice which is as f ear-dispelling as his words : 
"You seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not 
here. He is risen. Come see the place where the 
Lord lay." 

But why this "Come"? Had they not already 
and but just now seen the "place" and noticed 
carefully how everything about it appeared? 
Yet well does the angel say, "Come"; so differ- 
ently will the self -same burial-place look to them, 
now that they have a messenger from the Father 
to stand beside them and talk to them of the res- 
urrection. When at the angel's word they do rise 
and look again, behold, the tomb is no longer the 
dread place to them that it was before. In that 
chill gloom which had made of the two nights and 
of the intervening day one long night of death, 
their Lord had indeed lain. Why is He not here 



88 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

now ? Is it because either Pilate's band, the faith- 
less gardener, or the faithful disciples had first 
disrobed and then stolen him away? And is it 
the angel's comfort that he will at once go and 
dispute with Pilate about the body so that, re- 
covered and restored to its former resting-place, 
these doubly-sorrowing friends may yet re-embalm 
Him with their own waiting spices and with this 
same fine linen which Joseph bought and which 
the grave-robbers were considerate enough to 
leave behind? 

Far sweeter solace than that! The assurance 
that never again will Jesus need either grave- 
clothes or spices or even a tomb ; that having en- 
tered once for all that dismal waste and unbound 
all its dread fetters, never shall the place where 
he lay wear again the gloomy aspect of death; 
that the dark door of the sepulchre out of which 
he returns conqueror is to be evermore the gate- 
way, instead, of never-ending life. 

To complete their joy the angel makes the 
women sharers with himself in this ministry of 
consolation: "Go quickly and tell His disciples. 
This is still a troubled morning for them as it has 
been for you. Lost in a maze of sorrow ; the ob- 
ject of their deepest love and fondest hopes gone, 
they know not whither; stunned and bewildered, 
they wander about, desolate and aimless orphans. 
Be you the angels to cheer them as I have com- 
forted you. Tell them that Jesus is alive and 
that He loves them still. Tell them to go to their 



FROM SORROW TO JOY 89 

Galilean home whence He called them and whence 
they followed Him, and that there amid the places 
of their most loving communion and away from 
the scenes of His humiliation and death, they shall 
see Him. Lo, I have told you !" 

They need no second telling. The wonderful 
news gives them angels' tongues and almost an- 
gels' wings. They depart quickly from the sep- 
ulchre with fear and great joy and run to bring 
the disciples word. 

That angel of our Lord's resurrection still 
lives. Would it comfort us to find him some day 
standing in his shining garments by the graves 
of our own loved ones, and to have him assure us 
that they still live, albeit their bodies still remain 
buried? A surer guide, a holier comforter we al- 
ready have in the ever-present Jesus who, Him- 
self, the resurrection and the lif e, bids us turn our 
eyes up from our loved ones' graves to the man- 
sions He has gone to prepare for them in His 
Father's house. 

Have we sometimes exclaimed in bitterness of 
anguish, "O Elmwood; Woodmere; O Wood- 
lawn ; O Greenwood ; how you mock me with your 
beauty because you are so dumb !" Taking Jesus 
with us always in these visits of sorrowful remem- 
brance, we will say that no more. The friends 
we mourn are with Him who has gone before, in 
far better than all places of even sweetest earthly 
communion, into heaven itself. 

Such is the new, bright chapter in the annals 



90 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

of bereavement which was opened for us and for 
the world by that early-morning walk of the spice- 
bearing Marys to the sepulchre of their risen 
Lord. 



XXII 

SATAN'S FALL FORESEEN 

I beheld Satan, as lightning fall from heaven. 
Luke 10:18. 

A carpenter's apprentice was once asked by his 
sick pastor, at whose house he was then working, 
to offer a prayer at his pastor's bedside. Many a 
young man in such circumstances would, out of 
natural diffidence, have asked to be excused. But 
that young mechanic consented, and so moved 
was the pastor by his prayer that he took the 
young apprentice into his family and educated 
him for the ministry, and, as it proved afterward, 
for missionary work in India. This led that same 
pastor to the establishment of a Manual Training 
School for needy Christian young men, and that 
school, on being removed from Germantown to 
Easton, Pa., became the nucleus of Lafayette 
College. That modest, uneducated carpenter's 
apprentice saw nothing beyond what seemed to 
him at that time a simple but difficult duty ; but 
what great and far-reaching results did Christ 
foresee then and does the world see now ! 

The mother of Samuel J. Mills dedicated him 
when an infant to God. But in and beyond that 
faithful mother's act of consecration what did 
Christ see? Looking down the coming years, 
Christ traced the career of that infant child ; saw 
him a student in Williams College; saw him re- 

91 



92 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

newing there his mother's act of consecration; 
dedicating himself to foreign missionary work; 
enlisting a number of his fellow-students in the 
same cause and becoming the virtual founder of 
the American Board of Commisioners for Foreign 
Missions. What did Christ see in that mother's 
simple act of consecration? He saw the old and 
dreadful superstitions of two continents reeling 
to their fall. 

The work done by the Seventy sent out, two 
and two, was far greater than they had them- 
selves been at all aware of. They had been wholly 
taken up with the success of their work from day 
to day, and beyond that there was nothing which 
they could see. But Jesus tells them that he saw 
a great deal more and a great deal further. He 
assures them that their humble work done faith- 
fully, although on so small a field, was to have a 
world-wide influence ; that it would have to do 
with the complete overthrow of the Prince of 
Darkness in this world ; "Behold," he said, "I saw 
Satan as lightning fall from heaven." 

Jesus sees as only Jesus can see, how far any 
act done by him in however humble a way, in 
however humble a sphere, may extend. But He 
assures us that every such act helps toward the 
utter casting down of error and wrong and toward 
the full and everlasting enthronement of truth 
and righteousness. 



XXIII 

PERFECT AT LAST 

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who 
is in heaven is perfect. Matt. 5 : 48. 

The schoolboy's crooked up-and-down strokes 
on the first page of his copy-book are to the on- 
looker an almost ludicrous contrast to the finely 
engraved model above; a discouraging contrast, 
no doubt, to the pupil himself. The last line on 
the page shows a noticeable, perhaps, but still 
very distant approach to the perfect strokes at 
the top. Yet through each successive page the 
improvement continues until at the end of the 
many-leaved book is a line of which the pleased 
and patient master is pleased to say, "That, my 
boy, is as well done as I could have done it 
myself." 

"Perfect as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect," is no mere tantalizing theory, no im- 
possible command. There have been heart-heroes 
who have said, "It shall be done," and who have 
done it. Paul does not encourage or excuse any 
half-hearted "beating of the air" by saying, "I 
am trying hard as I ever can to keep my body 
under." He keeps it under. Stephen does not 
try merely to keep his temper before the preju- 
diced and persecuting council with its suborned 
false witnesses. He keeps it; keeps it perfectly. 
When at length he feels the thud of the cruel 



94 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

stones, his "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" 
is a perfect echo of the "Father, forgive them" 
of Him who had felt the thrust of the cruel spear. 
Our trying is a poor trying enough at first, but 
our faith being fuller of force than our trying 
is of faults, we do not give over until at length 
we succeed so well that the Master smiles upon us 
an approving and rewarding, "I could Myself 
have done it no better." 

Looking out in the dead of winter over his 
snow-imprisoned acres, the farmer (but that he 
has been otherwise instructed by experience) 
might exclaim despairingly, "What can I do to 
be saved from threatened hunger and starvation? 
To melt this forbidding mass of snow and ice is 
beyond my most earnest and toilsome endeavor. 
Were I even to cut and burn a hundred forests, 
the mighty hecatomb would not suffice to warm 
the soil or quicken the seed or ripen the harvest 
on a single field." 

True. But coming already on its way is the 
summer; God's loving offer of help to His 
children in their mortal need, and ready, other- 
wise, to perish. 

His offer accepted, on what a scene of re j oicing 
activity does the Father look complacently down 
— a million plows turning the soil on hillsides and 
in valleys, by great rivers and on boundless 
prairies; harvests shouted home by myriads of 
exultant reapers; happy households gathered 



PERFECT AT LAST 95 

around bountifully spread tables; the great 
globe's teeming population kept alive and saved. 

What of the unspeakably greater good to be 
secured for the soul? How supply its famishing 
hunger with the bread of life? 

"Looking at my heart and life," says one, "I 
behold a scene more wild and desolate than snow- 
wrapped fields; more despairingly enchained by 
more than Arctic frosts of pride, covetousness, 
envy, worldly ambition, self-righteousness and 
unbelief. Though art, taste, refinement and phi- 
losophy were to kindle all their fires and compass 
me with all their brilliant and crackling flames, 
they could not thaw the icy impenitence of my 
soul ; could not cause to spring one holy desire or 
ripen one holy act." 

True, again. But if God give one summer for 
the life of the body, "how much more" will He 
give another for the lif e of the soul ! 

Shall I be forever deploring, then, as though 
it were a just cause or excuse for despondency, 
that unless some all-powerfull Friend undertake 
for me, I can never repent, believe, and love unto 
salvation and eternal life ? 

From all such deprecatory and despairing nega- 
tives God's full provision and loving promise bid 
me wholly and at once to break away; bid me 
leap, rather, to say with most grateful though 
most humble positiveness, "Without Christ I 
could indeed do nothing, but such is not my case. 
I have Christ and with Him I can do all things." 



XXIV 

LOVE'S "FINALLY" 

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of 
the Lord may run and be glorified, even as it is also 
with you. II. Thes. 3:1. 

Nearly two-thirds of St. Paul's letter (the 
Second to the Thessalonians ) had been taken up 
with matters which concerned the brethren to 
whom he wrote ; not a word as yet about himself ; 
about his own labors, hardships, dangers and self- 
denials, although these had been so many and so 
great. So full was his loving heart of concern 
for his brethren's trials, perils and temptations 
that he had cast about him for that by which they 
might be shielded, comforted and encouraged. 
Only then does he say "finally" — "for what re- 
mains," as the original is. As much as to say, 
"I will improve the little time I have left to say a 
word about myself. I need your prayers as much 
as you need mine. Brethren, pray for us." 

In our own letter-writing we are apt to tell 
about ourselves first, apologizing for it, perhaps, 
at the close. But in St. Paul's correspondence 
we see: 

Love's beautiful postponement of self. 

Then, too, although he does say, "Pray for 
us 5 " it is not after all for himself, but for the 
great work in which he is engaged. He no sooner 
remembers himself than he forgets himself : "Pray 

96 



LOVE'S "FINALLY" 97 

for us, that the word of the Lord may have free 
course and be glorified." Here we see : 

Love for self losmg itself m care for its chosen 
object. 

It is as contributing to this that he asks them 
to pray that he "may be delivered from unreas- 
onable and wicked men" — men "that have no 
faith." Here we have : 

Lack of faith is that which makes men unreas- 
onable and wicked m their treatment of those en- 
thusiastically engaged m proclaiming the gospel 
of Jesus. 

Now comes a quick and happy turn from a 
merely negative deliverance to positive support 
and assurance of success: from men who cannot 
be relied on for help to One who can : "The Lord 
is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you 
from evil" ; or, 

Love's constant, ever-to-be-trusted care of its 
own. 

This love of God is that to which, above every- 
thing else, we need to have our hearts "directed," 
or (as the Greek of it is) "made to go"; to go, 
not in some round-about, dilatory way, but in a 
straight or direct way, indicating how liable we 
are to go to God's love — the truest, purest and 
surest of all — by the circuit either of lesser human 
loves or of some form or other of impatient, half- 
doubting legalism. In praying that their hearts 
may be "directed into the love of God and into 



98 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

patient waiting for Christ," St. Paul shows us 
what is 

Love's most needed, most earnest prayer for 
those whom it would bUss. 



II 



XXV 

THE EARLY MORNING OUTFIT OF 
PRAYER 

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, Lord; 
in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, 
and will look up. Ps. 5:3. 

Some one has said that "happiness consists in 
one's having more work that he wants to do, than 
he has time for doing it." 

Something more than time, however, is needed 
— the knowing how to do the most and the best 
work in what time we have. This question I will 
try to answer. 

Standing once by the immense granite quarry 
in Rockport, Cape Ann, and seeing how easily 
and constantly the steam-engine lifted the huge 
blocks from the quarry to the car, I said to the 
engineer, "This looks to me like too small an 
engine for so great a work; how do you manage 
it?" 

"Well," he replied, "the man before me said 
he could not manage it, and so he was dis- 
charged." 

"How is that?" I asked. 

"This way," said he. "That man was in the 
habit of coming late to the power house, and of 
starting the engine before the steam was up to 
par pressure. Consequently, it was a drag to 
start with, and as he never could catch up, it was 

101 



102 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

a drag the whole day through. I am always here 
on time. I get the engine in full working order 
before I begin, and so, as you see, it does the 
work easily enough." 

Just so with the day's work which any of us 
may have to do. All depends on getting the right 
start; getting ourselves in good working order 
before we begin — steam up and the machinery 
well oiled and ready for work. 

Now, as to the work — we all have, or are likely 
to have, heavy loads to lift and carry before the 
day is done. Housekeepers understand this; un- 
derstand it so well that I need not stop to explain, 
specify or enlarge. Fathers (and mothers, espe- 
cially) understand this perfectly — the meals to 
get at the right time and of the right kind; the 
children's clothes to be made and kept in repair; 
their morals, manners, studies, companionships 
and recreations to be carefully looked after — for 
all of which the parents need a great deal of wis- 
dom, strength and endurance, and patience with- 
out prescribing how much. 

Business men, too, have their burdens of care, 
anxiety and much toil of brain, if not of the 
hand. How go through all this with uniform and 
quiet steadiness and without the wearing friction 
of fret fulness, worry or impatience? 

The best preparation, as I think, is the early 
morning prayer; to begin the day by asking the 
blessing of God on our work, whatever the work 
may be, and then calmly committing ourselves, 



THE OUTFIT OF PRAYER 103 

our loved ones, our country and the world to His 
loving, wise and safe care and direction. So, so 
only, shall we be fully prepared to do well what 
it may come to us to do ; to bear whatever it may 
come to us to bear — heavier tasks it may be, than 
we have looked for ; it may be, sudden and wholly 
unexpected sorrow. The reserved strength which 
prayer gives takes us through the hardest as well 
as through the easiest of our toil and trial. 

It was a large, early-morning congregation I 
once saw, although it was not a congregation of 
people, nor was it gathered in chapel, church or 
hall. It was an assembly of white, red and green 
lanterns on the long platform of an "L" railway 
station in New York. The lanterns had been 
widely scattered during the night — some doing 
low-track ; some, platform ; some, tower and pillar 
service — each at its own assigned post of duty. 
This meant naturally an inch-by-inch lowering of 
the oil-levels in the lamps, and this, such a con- 
stant though imperceptible lessening of their illu- 
minating energy that they must all gather at 
their one common source of supply, to be there 
refilled before separating again to their several 
posts of service. 

We go forth, morning by morning, as full of 
good intentions as the signaling lamps are of oil ; 
with a fixed determination to answer cheerfully 
every call of duty; to stand in our respective 
places as sentinel examples of Christ-like living. 
Then comes the gradually depleting time. The 



104 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

fret of home cares, the anxieties of business, pro- 
vocation to wrong feeling, speech and act, social 
dissipation of serious thought, make silent with- 
drawal from our stock of grace. Our lamps grow 
dim and must be refilled and retrimmed if we would 
have them continue to bless those to whom we are 
set to guide, warn and cheer. 

The promise is explicit, that those who wait 
upon God in prayer shall renew their strength. 
Of those who do thus wait upon Him some walk 
without fainting, and some are not weary, even 
though they run. W e may even get wings. 
Some do. 



XXVI 

GIFTS FOR GAIN 

Occupy, till I come. Luke 19: 13. 

Neglect not the gift that is in thee.. I Tim. 4: 14. 

"Occupy" ; or, Anglicizing the Greek, "Prag- 
matize with the talents I give you, till I come." 
True, a single talent is a little sum, but for a start 
in "pragmatism," it is enough — enough, that is, 
for the obedient and faithful servant — enough 
wherewith to insure from the Lord of the talents 
not only a welcoming "well-done," but promotion 
to rulership over great "cities." 

With what silent compulsion of beautiful and 
yet serious example do we see the command and 
the implied promise borne in upon us by all grow- 
ing things about us; by growing things of the 
garden, conservatory, orchard, field and forest. 
A garden-seed, a flower-bulb, a grain-kernel, a 
beech-nut, an acorn — what little things they are ; 
yet to each has been given a hidden potency of 
beauty or of fruitfulness for the support and joy 
of our human lives. To each comes the command, 
"Stir up the gift of God that is in you." And 
what is the response? "Lord, it was a little seed, 
but as return for that little gift, I bring back to 
you the 'gain' of this lily, of this wheat-harvest, 
the fruit of this orchard, the elms, oaks and 
sequoias of this forest." And with what thankful- 
ness of men are they all received and enjoyed, 

105 



106 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

and with what a smile of benediction from the ap- 
proving Lord! 

"Freely ye have received." If I may be al- 
lowed the "free coinage" of a convenient word, I 
would say that donability, or the ability to give, 
is always conditioned upon susceptibility, which, 
looking at its root-meaning, we see to be simply 
the ability to take. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said to a friend: 
"Come with me out to my farm, and I will show 
you what a tree can do when you give it a 
chance !" And what was the secret of that grand 
old evergreen's magnificent success but that it 
had kept on steadily enlarging year by year its 
susceptibility, or taking power, until at length 
there was as much of a tree below ground as there 
was above, and until the aggregate of its leaf- 
surface is reckoned no longer by square yards, 
but by square roods? 

Our orchards, vineyards and grain-fields — why 
do they find themselves in the condition they are 
to make their yearly contributions to the world's 
need but that they have been as quick to seek and 
as free to take as they are now ready and gener- 
ous to give? What have their restless rootlets 
been but so many busy fingers spread out in all 
directions to feel after and find whatever the 
friendly soil has been free to furnish ? And what 
have the leaves been but so many beseeching and 
eager palms extended to welcome the help which 



GIFTS FOR GAIN 107 

has been offered them in the air and in the sum- 
mer's sunshine and showers? Vines and trees are 
generous givers only because, first, they have 
faithfully kept themselves in constant touch with 
their own proper sources of supply; because, 
second, they have been diligent to improve this 
opportunity of contact by receiving and appro- 
priating the provision offered ; and because, third, 
they have been careful to enlarge their power of 
appropriation to meet their continually growing 
needs. 

Why is it that some Christians we see are 
branches clustered always with spiritual fruit, 
ready always with their cheerful gifts of time, 
thought, prayer, sympathy, money, as opportuni- 
ties arise or fit occasions are presented? For the 
like three reasons, and for these only — because 
they keep themselves by an unwavering trust in 
closest union with Christ, the true Vine; because 
mind and heart are thus kept uninterruptedly 
open to receive the life He is ever waiting to im- 
part, and because along with these is a constantly 
growing susceptibility welcoming the larger and 
yet larger gifts of His inflowing love. 



XXVH 

GOOD CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 

Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe 
God that it shall be even as it was told me. Acts 
27:25. 

The ship on which Paul is being taken as a 
prisoner to Rome is a merchantman carrying a 
cargo of grain from Egypt. There are on board 
of her two hundred and seventy-six persons: the 
ship-master and crew, the owner or supercargo, 
some passengers from Cesarea, a military com- 
pany with Julius their captain and some state 
prisoners, whom he is taking to Rome. Among 
these prisoners is Paul, accompanied by two of 
his most faithful friends, Aristarchus of Mace- 
donia and Luke, who is both physician and evan- 
gelist. 

The difficulties of navigating the Mediterra- 
nean were the same two thousand years ago as 
they are to-day. "If the difference between 
ancient ships and our own is borne in mind, the 
problems of that early seamanship are reduced 
nearly to those with which the modern navigator 
has to contend in the same waters." 

Owing to contrary winds it was with diffi- 
culty that the vessel had made Fair Havens, a 
road-stead on the southern shore of the island of 
Crete. It was then about the first of October, 
the season of the year beyond which it was "im- 

108 



CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 109 

prudent to try the open sea, and the exact time 
when seafaring was pronounced to be dangerous 
by both Greek and Roman writers." It became, 
therefore, a matter for serious consideration and 
consultation whether to remain at Fair Havens 
for the winter or to seek some better harbor. 
Paul's advice is that they should remain. He 
warns the Centurion, Julius, that should he con- 
tinue the voyage at that time, it would be not only 
with great injury to the cargo and ship, but with 
great risk of their lives. The captain and super- 
cargo take a different view of the matter and 
advise to continue the voyage. As they have a 
greater personal interest in the safety of the ship 
and cargo, and are besides experienced seamen, 
the Centurion, naturally enough perhaps, takes 
their advice ; the more readily because their opinion 
is approved by a majority of those on board. As 
soon, therefore, as a fair wind springs up they 
set sail, hoping to reach Phenice on the western 
coast of the same island, a more commodious har- 
bor and a better wintering place. 

"The sailors," says Howson, "already see the 
high land of the coast and are proceeding in high 
spirits, fair-weather sails set and boat towing 
astern, forgetful of past difficulties and blind to 
impending dangers, when an alarming change 
comes over their fortunes without a moment's 
warning. While pursuing their course in full 
confidence close by the shore of Crete, a violent 
wind with all the appearance of a hurricane comes 



110 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

down from the mountains and strikes the ship 
with such violence that the pilot can no longer 
keep her to her course. They are blown off from 
the island and compelled to scud before the gale. 
In order to make sure of sea-room and at the same 
time drift to the westward, the ship is laid to. 
They strike sail, hoist the boat on board, under- 
gird the hull with cables and lighten the ship by 
throwing all the spare tackling into the sea." 
Hopeless wreck stares them in the face. 

It has been all the harder to bear the calamity 
which has come upon them, for the reason that 
they had been kindly warned against it. Paul, 
as we have seen, had earnestly admonished Julius 
that after the "fast," sailing was dangerous, and 
that they had better wait at Fair Havens for 
fairer weather. It was natural, perhaps, that the 
Centurion should believe the supercargo and the 
captain more than the things which were spoken 
by a man like Paul, who is only a religious 
teacher, and but one of a squad of prisoners whom 
the Centurion is conducting for trial to Rome. 
He soon finds, however, that a minister of the 
Gospel, and a prisoner at that, may possibly know 
something worth attending to, even about busi- 
ness. It is not long before the ship begins to be 
knocked about by an insolent and loud-mouthed 
sea, that pays no sort of respect to the dignity of 
even an imperial Captain. Just as the apostle 
had foreseen, "Euroclydon," that surly giant of 
the Adriatic, falls into one of his wrathful, peri- 



CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 111 

odic fits and is now mercilessly buffeting the un- 
wary vessel. Here is a good chance for Paul to 
take his revenge. The taunt would have been in 
order, "I gave you fair warning; you have run 
into this trouble with your eyes open, and now 
you must get out of it the best way you can." 
But Paul is of a different spirit; higher, purer, 
nobler. True, he does say, "Sirs, you should have 
hearkened unto me and not have loosed from Crete 
and to have gained this harm and loss." But this 
is no ugly, "I told you so." Paul does not sulk 
and throw up the whole business simply because 
his own advice was not taken. He has no small 
pride that must be apologized to, before he will 
volunteer to help. He frankly accepts the situa- 
tion and in a thoroughly manly way applies 
himself to the bettering of it. Instead of still 
further weakening his shipmates by selfish re- 
proaches, he strengthens them with words of 
cheer. If he does call to the Centurion's mind the 
mistake in not listening to his counsel, it is not to 
make capital out of it for his own distinction, but 
only that his comrades may the more easily rise 
above the mistake by seeing how heartily he can 
himself forgive it and how thoroughly he can 
forget it: "One glance only at the mistake made 
and the harm done ; now let it go, and let us do 
what we can to better the present and brighten 
the future" — such is the noble, Christ-like spirit 
of the apostle's talk. 

And that they may not look on all this as the 



112 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

cheap exhortation of a lucky weather-prophet, 
Paul lets them into a great secret of his — a report 
he has received from the only infallible signal- 
service Authority, that they shall weather the 
storm ; that the ship will be lost, but not a single 
life. With entire self-renunciation, and with the 
beautiful candor of humility, he gives all the 
credit of his confidence and courage where it justly 
belongs : "For there stood by me, this night, the 
angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, 
saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought 
before Caesar and, lo, God hath given thee all 
them that sail with thee. Wherefore, Sirs, be of 
good cheer, for I believe God, that it shall be even 
as it was told me." 

Paul believes two things: first, that God had 
through a special messenger sent him a promise 
of deliverence, and, second, that what God had 
thus promised He would certainly perform. In 
the midst of the darkness and danger which sur- 
rounds him this two-fold confidence makes Paul 
calm, cheerful and courageous. 

As we ourselves make the voyage of life, we 
are liable, every one of us, to be overtaken by 
storms as sudden and as violent as that which came 
down on that ill-fated ship. Losses, bereavements, 
oppositions, sicknesses, calumnies, may smite us 
and drive us far out of the course which we had 
marked out for our passage. And this may come 
to the best of men ; to God's own and dearest child. 



CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 113 

"True," says one, "yet a way may be found to 
bear uncomplainingly all such merely temporal 
afflictions as loss of property, position, popular 
esteem; of health and of friends even, knowing 
that these losses may somehow issue in a more than 
equivalent spiritual gain ; that a wholesome check 
to our rebellious complainings may be found in 
the words of the blind, bewailing Hebrew 'Ago- 
nistes' : 

' But peace ! I must not quarrel with the will 
Of highest dispensation which herein 
Haply hath ends above my reach to know/ 

but what of that deepest trouble of all; trouble 
which comes to us, not as trouble came to the 
shipwrecked sailors simply through an error of 
practical judgment, but through the dark fore- 
bodings of a guilty and awakened conscience — ■ 
sins committed by us against warnings and coun- 
sels of the dearest and wisest of friends ; against 
the gentle but earnest dissuasions of the heavenly 
monitor within"? 

Yes, trouble, indeed ! "Fortune lost" ; do you 
say? "Health gone? Friends removed or 
estranged?" Not one of these, nor all of them 
together, are worthy to be named in the com- 
parison. These earthly sorrows are but the shore- 
shallows of the mind. Would you know where 
the deep-sea soundings are? Cast your lead into 
the depths of a soul sorrowing over its remem- 
bered sins. Know by sad experience what it 



114 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

means to be tossed up and down in that Adria of 
anguish, where neither sun or star in many days 
appears ; when no small tempest beats on the soul, 
and when all hope that it will be saved is taken 
away. 

In such an hour as that, it will help us, if we 
recall the darkness, the helplessness, the despair 
in which that ship of Alexandria was reeling and 
pitching in the merciless, mad waves of the Adri- 
atic — officers, prisoners, passengers and crew, all 
at both their wits' end and their hopes' end — 
"all" hope that they would be saved taken away. 
Yet, just when they deem that they draw near 
to death, a light breaks forth in their very midst ; 
a light which banishes fear and inspires courage ; 
a light kindled by an invisible spark from the 
heavens ; a message of love, a promise of deliver- 
ance direct from God. 

So when tempest-tossed by reason of our sins, 
reeling under the blows of an accusing conscience, 
enveloped in the gloomy mantle of shame, terri- 
fied by the thunders of violated law, ready to 
despair of ever attaining to eternal life; even in 
that night of the soul a light shines forth; a 
voice of cheer comes to us; the light not shining 
visibly; the voice not speaking audibly from the 
skies, but none the less a light and a voice from 
God, shining and speaking to us from His holy 
Word; a message of love, of mercy, of deliver- 
ance; assuring us that the God with whom we 
have to do is merciful and gracious, that he passes 



CHEER FOR DARKEST HOURS 115 

by iniquity, transgression and sin; that he does 
not take advantage of our iniquities to mark them 
against us; that from our worst mistakes, errors 
and follies He turns away just so soon as we turn 
away from them to Him; and that He then not 
only "takes the sting out of the remembrance of 
our wrong-doing," but that He makes use of our 
failures and our faults only as the dark cloud in 
which to set His bright bow of pardon, of promise, 
of hope, of eternal life. 



XXVIII 

THE BROKEN HEART 

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken 
heart, and saveth such as are of a contrite spirit. 
Ps. 34: 18. 

When we telephone a message which is to be 
sent by telegraph, if it be a specially important 
message, we repeat it to the telegraph operator 
and have him repeat it to us. 

God had an important message for Pharaoh. 
It came to Pharaoh in two dreams : one, about the 
well-favored and the ill-favored kine; the other, 
about the full and the empty ears. Yet, when 
Joseph was called to interpret them, he told 
Pharaoh that the dreams were one, because, al- 
though so unlike in form, they were alike in 
meaning. They were parallel dreams. 

We have a like parallelism in the text. To be 
of a "contrite spirit" is the same as to be of a 
"broken heart" ; and "having God nigh to us" is 
but another way of saying what it is to be 
"saved." The message is repeated for the same 
reason that the dream was doubled to Pharaoh: 
to make assurance doubly sure that it is a thing 
unalterably established by God. The dream was 
given to Pharaoh to save the life of the body only ; 
the text is given to us for the saving of the soul. 

But we have a Book-parallelism as well as a 
verse-parallelism — the teaching of the New Tes- 

116 



THE BROKEN HEART 117 

tament being in exact accord with the teaching of 
the Old. Jesus gives the indispensableness of 
humility in order to salvation the very first place 
in His list of beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor 
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
"Do you think," asks an apostle, "do you think 
that the Scripture saith in vain that God resisteth 
the proud, but giveth grace to the humble?" 
And, "humble yourself therefore under the 
mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in 
due time," is but another parallelism to my text. 

"But what does this mean," you ask; "what is 
it to be of a broken heart and a contrite spirit ?" 

"Breaking" means — yielding to pressure. 
There comes a heavy snow-fall; the roof yields 
to the pressure and is broken in. A tornado — a 
too violent wind pressure — and the steeple rocks, 
topples and falls. The mine-owner robs the pillars 
of coal left to prop the roof of the mine. At 
length they begin to "crawl out" at the foot, the 
hill settles and buries the unfortunate miners. In 
all such cases there is resistance up to a certain 
point ; then the stay yields. It may be broken in 
a few pieces — in "two" only, perhaps — or, as 
with the pillar of coal, it may be broken into a 
great many — "broken all to pieces," as we say. 
Then it is "contrite," for to be contrite means to 
be crushed ; to be broken all to pieces. In either 
case, the meaning is the same — a ceas'mg utterly 
to resist. 



118 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

The text speaks of a heart that is broken ; of a 
spirit that is contrite ; and the assurance is given 
that God is nigh to such a heart; that such a 
spirit He saves. 

But why break any man's heart ; why wish that 
any one's spirit should be crushed? What is there 
in the spirit of any man, woman or child that God 
must see it crushed before He can draw nigh to it 
and save it? 

Is not this the exact opposite to what we would 
naturally expect? Is it not contrary to the very 
first principle of all true architecture? What 
does your trained civil engineer do but make the 
most careful study of the strength of the mate- 
rials he is to use, so as to make sure that the pillar, 
the beam, the arch, the bridge, be not broken? 
How much pressure it will bear without breaking? 
A careless estimate, and you have the crowded 
platform at a public gathering give away; you 
have the Ashtabula-bridge horror; you have the 
collapse of the New York Orchard Street houses. 
Instead of weakening, breaking, crushing, or tear- 
ing down, does not the honest and wise builder 
stiffen and strengthen, and so build that the build- 
ing will stand and never give way and fall? 

Is it not this, too, what we seek in character 
building, for ourselves, our children, our fellow- 
men? Do we not study how much their disposi- 
tion, temper, patience, moral fibre, will bear? 
Are we not careful, and ought we not to be care- 
ful, not to subject them to too great a strain? 



THE BROKEN HEART 119 

"What is a broken-spirited man, woman or child 
good for?" we ask. Is he not a misery to himself, 
a burden to his friends, and the pity of the world? 
And is it not cruel, is it not a shame, is it not a 
crime, to break down the spirit of your child, of 
your friend, of your neighbor? Must not that 
be a mistaken kind of religion that would break 
us down and so make weaklings of us all? 

The answer is that there are in us all both good 
and evil, and that it is the evil and the evil only 
that God wants to have broken down and de- 
stroyed. Whatever is good, pure, right and 
praiseworthy in any one, that He desires to have 
strengthened and by all means to be built up; 
built up so firmly and securely as to stand, and 
stand forever. 

To make this clear, suppose of a boy that he 
has pleasing qualities of person and of mind ; that 
he is beautiful in feature and form; that he is 
bright, intelligent and in many respects amiable; 
but that he is wilful, headstrong, disrespectful, 
disobedient ; that he declares by his actions, if not 
by his words, that he will not be ruled by his 
father; that he will do just as he pleases, whether 
it pleases his father or not. Now that obstinate, 
rebellious spirit spoils everything, and will so 
long as it is held to. That stubbornness, you 
say, he must in some way be made to give up; 
that proud, defiant, disobedient spirit must be 
broken. It must, or the boy is ruined. So long 
as that disposition remains, there cannot be — how 



120 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

can there be? — happy intercourse between his 
father and him? Some things are impossible, and 
this is one of them. It is a moral impossibility 
for the father to draw nigh to such a child in an 
approving way until that wayward, unfilial, undu- 
tiful, insubmissive spirit be given up. By that 
spirit the child puts up an effectual bar between 
himself and his father. Any excellencies he may 
have cannot make up for this radical wrong. He 
may be quick in apprehension, versatile in talent, 
diligent in study, even brilliant in genius. His 
intercourse with his companions may be honorable 
and courteous. Outside of the home circle, his 
conduct may be without reproach. The neigh- 
bors, who do not know what his home-conduct is, 
may all speak well of him. But for the father, 
who does know it all, that makes the matter worse 
rather than better. Nothing of all that satisfies 
the yearning he feels for his child's confidence 
and love. The father is glad of every good en- 
dowment his child has and of every good acquire- 
ment. It is not these that he would have lessened 
in the least. Not his comeliness of person, not his 
quick and retentive memory, not his vivacity and 
mirthfulness, not even his strength of will — 
nothing in him that is good, honorable, excellent 
and praiseworthy does the father wish to have 
interfered with or damaged; only that which is 
an evil and a curse, only that which carries in it 
the seeds of shame, disgrace, unhappiness and 
ruin to the child himself. But the last vestige 



THE BROKEN HEART 121 

of every such thing in the boy, the father does 
want broken and done away with forever. If you 
are a wise and faithful father, you will leave no 
means untried to save your child from so terrible 
a ruin. You will bring such pressure of appeal 
to bear on his heart and conscience as, if anything 
can, will cause him to yield ; and you will continue 
to press these appeals until that unfilial obstinacy 
be given up. 

Just that and nothing more does God desire to 
have broken and crushed in any man's heart. The 
undutiful, disobedient child of God indulges 
towards God, his Heavenly Father, a spirit which, 
if he be himself a father, he cannot at all put up 
with in his own child toward himself. He does 
exactly what pleases himself, not asking and not 
caring much to know whether it pleases God or 
not. What God bids him to do he refuses to do, 
unless it happen to fall in with his own inclina- 
tions. What God forbids, that, if it suits him, he 
does not scruple or hesitate to do ; the bitter enor- 
mity, the heaven-and-earth astonishing crime of 
which God complains: "Hear, O heavens and be 
astonished, O earth; I have nourished and 
brought up children and they have rebelled 
against me." "If I be a father, where is my 
my honor?" God has no fault to find with any- 
thing else. He grudges no uncoverted, prayer- 
less man any intellectual gifts he may have, be it 
breadth of culture, refinement of taste, grace of 
manner, felicity of speech, success in business, 



122 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

any accumulation of honest wealth. God is glad 
to see any man's barns filled with plenty, to see 
his table bountifully spread, to see him happy in 
the society of many friends. Is it not He that 
gives friends, health, talent, riches, honor? Who 
makes His sun to shine on the evil, and sends 
rain on even the unjust? But how can He take 
pleasure in those whom He thus blesses and bene- 
fits so long as they maintain towards Him an at- 
titude of unthankfulness and insubmission? How 
can He draw to them and save them? This un- 
thankful, unfilial, disobedient spirit must be giv- 
en up, and the moment it is given up there is lov- 
ing communion between father and son. Then 
the returning wanderer is given the ring, the 
shoes, the robe and the feast, and then is there 
jcy even among the angels of God. 

Consider, now, the pressure that God brings to 
bear on the impenitent and self-willed to cause 
them to yield. There is the pressure of fear. 
The one thing most to be dreaded in this world 
or in any world is, knowing what is right, either 
not to do it, or to do what is wrong : — 

" What conscience dictates to be done, 
Or warns me not to do; 
This give more than hell to shun, 
That more than heaven pursue." 

As it would be both weak and wrong in God to 
surrender his right to our obedient love, He 



THE BROKEN HEART 123 

warns those who would contend with Him against 
so unequal a strife — unequal, because, on our 
part, so unjust. 

But there is another and mightier appeal — an 
appeal to hope, to gratitude, to love. God takes 
away all excuse for continuing the contest by the 
gracious offer of the free, full and immediate 
forgiveness of all past wrong-doing, and of a 
complete and joyous restoration to all the priv- 
ileges of loyal subjects and dutiful sons. And 
does not a heart need to be broken which resists 
both the fear that drives and the love which 
draws ? 

The giving up of this enmity and the thank- 
ful acceptance of the offer of pardon and eternal 
life through the Lord Jesus Christ — taking our 
proper place again as obedient children in the 
family and as loyal subjects under the govern- 
ment of God — this is to be of a broken heart and 
a contrite spirit. 

1. That we may avoid being mistaken in so 
important a matter, it is to be carefully con- 
sidered that one may be broken handed without 
being broken hearted. Although utterly broken 
handed, Napoleon on St. Helena is not at all 
broken hearted. Though now powerless, he is 
none the less proud. He refuses to take defeat 
as a lesson in humility. "My soul," he says, 
"is marble; calamity has no more effect upon it 
than oil poured upon a rock." In spirit he fights 



124 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

against the providence which dooms him thus to 
lif e-long exile from the scenes of his former gior j. 
He shows no relenting for lives sacrificed, homes 
made desolate, conjugal vows violated. His 
dying words, "The head of the army," show that, 
to the very last, his thoughts are still on con- 
quest, on dominion, on a war-lord's renown. 

2. It should, again, be noted that to be 
broken-hearted is not, by any means, to be down- 
hearted. It is not to give up hope, courage, 
enterprise and energy in the affairs of this world. 
Some there are who have met with ill-fortune; 
who, for one reason or another, have failed of 
success ; who have been beaten back as fast as by 
much painstaking effort they had gotten on- 
ward; who have lost property, credit, position, 
friends. They struggled bravely for a time, but 
they have at length become discouraged. They 
no longer have ambition; have ceased trying to 
retrieve their affairs. They have lost heart and 
hope. They are dejected. What is worse still, 
they may have beeome bitter, misanthropic and 
morose. 

Such persons are Spirited, but they are not 
contrite in spirit ; they are down-hearted, but 
they are not broken-hearted. Misfortune has not 
led them back to God, to find in Him a Father 
who chastens only because He loves. 

3. And, once more, to be broken-hearted is 
more than it is simply to bend under the pressure 
of divine truth. Many there are who bend, but 



THE BROKEN HEART 125 

do not break. They have what is likely to prove 
a fatal quickness in assenting to even the most 
faithful preaching of the Word of God ; examples 
of "deadening familiarity" with duty acknow- 
ledged, but not done; self-complacent in the use 
of merely the words and the attitudes of worship. 

What is needed in the case of such persons is a 
full and honest acceptance of the naked truth of 
things ; an unreserved acknowledgment as true, 
of all the facts of their past lives ; a frank con- 
fession of their need and of their duty as set 
forth in the Word of God. Our real manhood 
and our safety for this world and the next de- 
pend on our looking the facts of our lives — and 
it is only with facts that God deals — dark, dread- 
ful, humiliating as they may be — squarely, stead- 
ily, unflinchingly in the face. We must not bend. 
Standing bolt upright, full-fronting God's stern 
truth, let the confession and the submission be 
quick and full : "What is so, Father, is so, and I 
have nothing to say." 

This ends the ^controversy. No concealment, 
no prevarication, no evasion, no rebellious and 
deceitful postponement of an immediate duty. 

Why do not all who are convinced of their sins 
and sinfulness do this? Because, when thus con- 
vinced, our first instinct is to put out our hands 
for support. We do not like to fall. We crave 
sympathy in our distress; the distress of hard 
pressed but, as yet, unbroken hearts. The de- 
sire for such sympathy is unwholesome, unmanly 



126 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

and is really insincere. Such sympathy, could 
we have it from never so many friends, would be 
vain and unrelieving. What we need is not sym- 
pathy in our sin, but sympathy and help in an 
honest purpose to confess and forsake it — sym- 
pathy, not in any attempt to escape our duty, 
but in a dead-in-earnest determination to do it. 
What we are to do is not to "fawn around the 
cross," but resolutely to take the cross and bear 
it after Jesus. The moment we do this, what an 
untold wealth of the richest, tenderest sympathy 
awaits us ! How the heart of Jesus warms to- 
ward us ! How angel-bands bend lovingly toward 
us and beckon! How Christian friends, how the 
church of Christ below and above welcome us! 
Then is God indeed nigh to us ; then does He save 
us with an everlasting salvation. 



XXIX 

TENACITY OF CHRISTIAN PURPOSE 

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, 
that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but 
was let hitherto. Rom. 1: 13. 

We call a uniform way of acting a law — a 
natural law, if it be a natural force that so acts. 
"Directly as the mass and inversely as the square 
of the distance" is gravity's way of acting. It 
is not a whim, a caprice, acting one way at one 
time but another way at another. It is something 
that can be relied on with no fear of failure. It 
is as strong and as persevering now as it was a 
thousand or ten thousand years ago. It does not 
grow weary by waiting. Hindered it may be for a 
time, yet it bates not one jot of either its purpose 
or its power. It does not cease to act because 
balked awhile in its aim. Hold a stone in the air 
for a hundred days. It does not fall ; but why? Be- 
cause it is "let hitherto" by the counter-working 
force of a human will. But, although not drawn 
to the ground it is, none the less, drawn. And 
this tireless force out-tires the strongest arm. 
And why this? Because there is in it the un- 
lessened might of Omnipotence working against 
an obstacle of limited and diminishing resistance. 
Reaching up its unseen fingers it is, even now in 
this midsummer day, pulling at every leaf on 
every tree. It is "let" for a little, but its triumph 

127 



128 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

is sure. A few more days, and it will strew the 
ground with its autumn spoils. It is not daunted 
by the pyramids even, but will one day bring 
them down, mingling their sand with the sands of 
the desert. 

There is a law of the summer. Be it that the 
spring is backward and discouraging. All the 
same the summer comes. The very latest of the 
leaves escape, at length, from their prison-cells. 
And when they come, it is with this salutation: 
"We would not have you ignorant that oftentimes 
we purposed to come to you, but were let hither- 
to." 

There is a law of Christian purpose; of a 
purpose inspired, energized, directed and gov- 
erned by love to the Lord Jesus Christ, His people 
and His cause. We are as morally certain what 
a man so purposing will do under given circum- 
stances as we are naturally certain what, under 
given circumstances, a natural force will do. 
Whatever may be the hindrances to its success, it 
still works with a determination that is never 
spent and that never tires. 

St. Paul serves as a striking illustration. Al- 
though he has made three missionary journeys, 
he has never yet visited Rome. Such aloofness 
might, not uncharitably, perhaps, be taken as 
intended neglect; not only because the Roman 
Church, made up largely as it is of Gentile con- 
verts, calls for his personal supervision; but be- 
cause, also, it is a much more important church 



TENACITY OF PURPOSE 129 

than are most of the churches which he has him- 
self gathered. It has come to be widely known 
for its Christian zeal and steadfastness. Its 
faith is spoken of "throughout the whole world." 
The apostle, besides, has a personal acquaintance 
with may of its members, as shown by the many 
salutations at the close of the epistle. 

That he has not long since visited these be- 
loved brethren who have stood so faithfully for 
Christ in the foremost seat of officially-protected 
heathenism is, he assures them, from no lack on 
his own part of either interest or intention. He 
has a strong desire to see them. It is a desire 
which, for years past, he has warmly cherished. 
It has, indeed, been more than a desire; it has 
been a fixed purpose. Again and again he has 
fully determined to make this visit; has set a 
time, over and over, for his coming, but, each time 
something has prevented him. So, although no 
apology is needed yet, as he would not have his 
detention construed as indifference, he does make 
ample explanation: "I would not have you 
ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed 
coming to you, but was let, hitherto." 

As proof of the earnest sincerity of this pur- 
pose, "Pray with and for me," he adds, "that I 
may be delivered from them that do not believe 
in Judea and that my service which I have for 
Jerusalem may be accepted of them, that I may 
come to you with joy by the will of God, and may 
with you be refreshed." 



130 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

The appeal to God finds an unlooked-for 
answer in the "appeal to Caesar." Planned and 
"personally" conducted for him by his bitterest 
enemies, the journey which the Apostle has so 
long and so ardently wished and prayed that he 
might take, brings him at length to that welcom- 
ing escort of brethren from Rome which at Ap- 
pii Forum causes him to "thank God and take 
courage." The long hindered purpose, made in- 
vincible by prayer, is now happily fulfilled. 



XXX 

GIVING CONSCIENCE THE BENEFIT OF 
THE DOUBT 

But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, be- 
cause he eateth not of faith; and whatsoever is not 
of faith is sin. Rom. 14: 23. 

Some one has said and said truly, as I think, 
that every man's first duty in life is to preserve 
the peace of his own mind; that he can do this 
only by keeping on good terms with his own cons- 
cience, and that an uneasy conscience will disturb 
a man's peace more than will any form of merely 
outward affliction; more than would the loss of 
health, property, position or friends. If, then 
we would have this "New-year" to be for us a 
really "happy" one, our first care must be to do 
nothing which we either know, or believe, to be 
wrong. 

Now, I have no hesitation in saying that there 
is not one of us here, this morning, but intends 
to be careful in just that way. We are all going 
to keep ourselves so well in hand as not to do any- 
thing wrong ; nothing very wrong, I mean ; noth- 
ing positively, absolutely wrong; nothing which 
we know our consciences would condemn us for 
having done. Not one of us is in the least afraid 
of being haled before the district judge, or of in 
any way justly forfeiting the good opinion of 
either society or of our friends. Our danger, if 

131 



132 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

danger there be, will lie in the temptation to do 
things which we fear are not exactly right, but 
which we hope are not exactly wrong; things 
which make us debate with ourselves whether we 
ought to do them or not. Finding ourselves dis- 
tracted about them ; pulled now this way and now 
that ; we would be heartily glad if some one whom 
we could trust would decide the matter for us ; one 
who would, at least, help us to decide and to decide 
rightly. For all such cases, I venture to propose 
this as a safe rule for us to follow: Until my 
course be perfectly clear, I will give my con- 
science (not inclination) the benefit of the doubt. 
Take, by way of illustration, so simple a matter 
as that of eating and drinking; something which 
we all not only have to do, but which we enjoy 
doing; but for the very reason that we enjoy 
doing it and in proportion as we enjoy it, some- 
thing which we are in constant danger of over- 
doing. It may not be true of everybody, but for 
very many of us it would be worth a good deal to 
know, if we could, two things: First just what 
it would be best for us to eat and drink ; but even 
more than that, how much at each of the thou- 
sand and odd meals of the year, it would be best 
for us to take. Many persons have little idea of 
how much this would mean to them, to how great 
a degree health depends upon it, and, with health, 
temper, disposition and ability to do our best 
work in the best way. Quite recently, one of our 
most honored and most useful citizens told me of 



BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT 133 

the care he had found it indispensable for him 
to take about his diet; and especially about the 
matter of over-eating. A still more striking ex- 
ample is this. I was once an inmate of a home 
where the honored president of one of our New 
England colleges was sometimes a guest. On all 
such occasions he brought to the table a pair of 
little scales to weigh whatever he ate Yes, I know 
— you smile; a smile of amusement; perhaps of 
derision ; and I know what you are ready to say : 
"Oh, he was one of your confirmed dyspeptics." 
True enough, he was ; but now had he become so, 
is the question. 

A greatly esteemed physician once told me that 
he avoided over-indulgence by always rising from 
the table with as good an appetite as he sat down 
with — too hard a rule, I am sure, for the average 
man or woman to follow; certainly so for the 
average child. 

A celebrated divine once gave this warning 
to his friends : "Bring your hour-glass with you 
to the table. Set it down by your plate. See 
how long you are in enjoying the over-luxurious 
banquet; then turn the glass and see how long 
you are in suffering from it." This is a clever 
enough epigram, but it is hardly a safe rule, for 
the reason that the enjoyment is present, known, 
and sure, while the suffering is remote and some- 
what uncertain. 

The best rule I know of was once given to some 
of us college boys, at Williams" by our wise, re- 



134 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

vered, and much-loved professor, Albert Hopkins. 
It is this: "The moment you begin to doubt 
whether you have eaten enough or not, is the time 
to stop." This is the Scriptural rule, he said; 
and in confirmation of it he quoted what St. Paul 
says about this very matter of eating: "Happy 
is the man that condemneth not himself in that 
thing which he alloweth. He that doubteth is con- 
demned, if he eat, because he eateth not in faith ; 
for whatsoever is not of faith (that you are not 
clear about) is sin." 

We shall, I am sure, be saved from a good deal 
of unhappiness during the year on which we are 
now entered, if we are careful to apply this same 
test, not only to this, but to all other instances 
of questionable behavior — to things which we 
shall be tempted to do, but things which we shall 
hesitate about doing, saying or writing because 
not fully persuaded in our minds that it would 
be right for us to do them. It may be doubtful 
ways of spending time or money ; doubtful ways 
of doing business ; doubtful places and forms of 
pleasure or amusement ; doubtful ways of spend- 
ing the Sabbath. All such questions we must 
consider with ourselves honestly and conscien- 
tiously. There are so many ways of cheating, or 
trying to "cheat, an uncomfortable conscience," 
that we are often reluctant even to consider the 
possibility that we may be wrong. Giving con- 
science the benefit of the doubt until sure that 
we are right, will be the safe, and the only safe, 
course for us to take. 



BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT 135 

Nothing will help us, in such cases, so much as 
prayer. We believe in prayer, or we should not 
be here this morning. We have for our en- 
couragement this special promise of answers to 
such prayers: "If any man lack wisdom, let 
him ask of God who giveth to all liberally, and 
upbraideth not ; and it shall be given him. But let 
him ask in faith, nothing wavering." 

So praying and so doing, at the close of the 
year (or, should we not live to see it, then at the 
close of our life) "our rejoicing will be this, the 
testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity 
and godly sincerity we have had our conversa- 
tion," both with ourselves and "with the world." 



XXXI 

NUMBERING OUR DAYS 

So teach us to number our days that we may ap- 
ply our hearts unto wisdom. Ps. 90:12. 

"I suppose you have your itinerary all mapped 
out, even to a day," I said to a friend about mak- 
ing a long tour abroad. 

"No," he replied, "that would spoil it all for 
me. I do not tie myself down as to either places 
or times. I shall go and stay, and go and stay 
again, as the mood takes me." 

That, though, is something most tourists can- 
not do. There is a limit to the number of days 
they will have at their command. The sailing- 
dates are fixed for both going and coming. It 
is not from choice but from necessity that, having 
cut it short, what they will take in and leave out, 
they "apply their hearts to the wisdom" of mak- 
ing the most they can of their sight-seeing days. 

A young man decides on a professional career 
in life. Compared with its anticipated duration, 
his days of preparation are comparatively few. 
He numbers them easily enough; three years in 
fitting for college, four years in college, and 
three in the professional school. Allowing forty 
weeks of study to the year, on the use made of 
these four hundred weeks depends the good or 
the ill success of his whole life. The "wise" 
student counts carefully the weeks of each passing 

136 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS 137 

term, not because they are so many but because 
they are so few; so almost nothing, indeed, com- 
pared with the many decades which he means to 
fill with useful and honorable work in the world. 
Gladstone is reported as having once punctuated 
the difference between the student who thus 
thoughtfully numbers his college-days and one 
who lets them slip by carelessly unimproved, by 
saying, "One-third of our Oxford and Cambridge 
men come only because they are sent; one-third 
come with no other idea than that of having a 
good time. The other third rules England !" 

If it be worth while asking, "Where and how 
shall I spend these few, fleeting days of my 
earthly life?" how vastly more to the purpose 
must it be to ask, "Where and how shall I spend 
my eternity?" It is a short problem to reduce 
the traditional "three-score years and ten" to the 
twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty days 
of which they are composed. True, they do seem 
so defined, to be a large sum. But the point to 
be considered is that it is, after all, a sum — a 
sum-total. Each day spent takes one from the 
number and brings us that much nearer the end. 
What, then, of even the longest lived of the an- 
tediluvian patriachs? What of Methuselah, him- 
self? Were we, too, to be multi-centenarians, how 
surely would come the hour when, looking back, 
we would be compelled to ask, "For what is our 
life?" and to answer, "Verily it is but a vapor 
which appeareth but a little while and then vanish- 
eth away." 



138 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

A weaver's shuttle, a shepherd's tent, the swift 
ships, the eagle hastening to its prey, the shadow 
that declineth, the fading flower, the withering 
grass, the ebbing tide, a tale that is told — yes, 
satire, sorrow and despair have exhausted the 
vocabulary of simile and metaphor to depict the 
swift passing of this our earthly life. Why "all 
vanity and vexation of spirit" but that it is all 
so brief? 

Yet is the cynic's shaft blunted, grief com- 
forted and despair chastened by Nature herself 
showing all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, 
how disproportionately vast is the good that fol- 
lows the right improvement of even short periods 
of time. What gives the seed-time its super- 
lative importance, but that it is so brief? Yet, 
promptly and faithfully improved, these few days 
insure support for the remaining three hundred 
and sixty-five. Numbering the days and apply- 
ing both heart and hands to this kind of admoni- 
tion, the "wise" husbandman plows in plowing 
time, in planting time, he plants, in harvest time, 
he reaps and gathers into barns. 

What, then, of the life to come, the everlasting 
life ? Of the world where time shall be no longer ; 
from whose speech all our time-words are fore- 
ever dropped; where is no reckoning of days, or 
years, or centuries, or milleniums ; where is neither 
calendar or almanac marking the days of the 
week and month, the flow of the tides, the rising 
and setting of sun and moon? Here, seeking in 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS 139 

vain for some time-unit of measurement, the most 
profound student of numbers finds himself de- 
pairingly out-numbered. Be it, that he could 
number the dust-grains in the whole wide air, 
the drops of all the oceans, the leaves of all the 
forests — taken all together, they give no ground 
for intelligent comparison; they are not even the 
smallest fraction of eternity. In imagination we, 
now and then, try as time-engineers to survey 
that on-stretching road of the hereafter, but we 
tire at length of carrying our chain forward and 
driving and numbering our stakes. We pause, 
and at length we cease. The world and the life 
we have here entered is a world and a life with- 
out end. 

Just here, however, we are confronted with the 
honest and anxious doubter to whom it seems 
most unreasonable and unjust that so moment- 
ous an issue, so vast a destiny, should be made to 
hang on the short, uncertain time allotted to us 
in this world. How can poor, weak, tempted and 
sinful mortals hope, by even the most faithful 
endeavor to pass examination for a world which 
only the righteous can enter? To the most 
strenuous, but unaided human effort, it were, in- 
deed, impossible. Impossible, were our Examiner 
strict to mark our offences and implacable in His 
judgments. But since He is a compassionate, 
and merciful Father, a happy issue of life is 
possible for even those who have wandered fur- 
thest from the right, the safe path. For, what 



140 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

is conversion? It is simply a "turning;" fanning 
from the wrong road to the right one. It is a 
matter, therefore, not of distance but of direction. 
It is like the turn-table at a railroad station, the 
object of which is simply to change the direction 
of the train. Its length of a few yards only is 
as nothing compared with the breadth of the con- 
tinent across which the train is to ran. But short 
as it is, it determines the traveler's destination. 
God in His great mercy has provided in the Gos- 
pel of His Son the means and opportunity for 
such a change as will take us to our journey's end 
in peace. For making this change, a very little 
time is enough. True, there may be an unneces- 
sarily long struggle with pride, self-will or un- 
belief before the one moment of final and happy 
decision. But the wickedest man may at any 
time, if he so wills, "forsake his way and the most 
unrighteous man his thoughts and mav return 
to the Lord*' who will then have mercy upon him 
and who will at once and abundantly forgive and 
biot forever all his sins. How long did it take 
Peter and Andrew, James and John to leave their 
nets : Matthew his "seat at the receipt of custom :" 
Zaccheus, to welcome Jesus as his guest : Saul, to 
look up and say, "Lord, what wilt thou have me 
to do?" 

So easy is it for us all to forget hozc quickly 
the years pass, that we cannot pray too earnestly, 
"So teach us to number our days that zee may 
apply our hearts unto icisdom.''' 









XXXII 

SYSTEM AND SENTIMENT IN GIVING 

And when they brought out the money that was 
brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the 
priest found the book of the law of the Lord, by the 
hand of Moses. II Chron. 24: 14. 

The raising of money for religious uses was 
a thing well and wisely looked after in the old 
Levitical days and, with all our up-to-date pro- 
gress, we have neither outgrown the need or out- 
done the method. 

It was thoroughly systematic, to begin with. 
"It was a book of rates," as Henry says ; "so 
much for a child over one month old and under 
five years ; so much for those between five and 
twenty years ; so much for those over sixty — the 
rich, according to their ability, and the poor 
according to theirs ; something for those of either 
sex and of every age- — the money that every man 
is set at." 

It was not an open question whether the means 
for the support of public worship should be pro- 
vided or not. A solid foundation was laid in un- 
debatable requirement. At the same time pro- 
vision was made for the free exercise of individual 
sentiment and choice ; "All the money that cometh 
into any man's heart," or, as in the margin, "All 
the money that ascendeth upon the heart of a 
man." Here we have not only the strength of 

141 



142 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

method but the beauty of desire ; the love of God 
overcoming the naturally gravitating power of 
gold, giving it buoyancy to ascend from the cold 
depths of the man's pocket upon the warmth of 
the man's heart so that, not by any penalizing 
compulsion but out of the fulness and freeness of 
his love, he brings his uncommanded gift into the 
Lord's house. 

The pastor of probably the richest of all our 
great city churches once administered a whole- 
some and stinging rebuke to his congregation for 
the slipshod way in which the financial affairs of 
the church were being conducted — a chronic de- 
ficit (just then $7,000.00 behindhand) which 
had always to be made up, if made up at all, by 
piteous appeals to individual members for supple- 
mentary subscriptions. Whence the trouble? 
From failure to make systematic provision for 
promptly meeting obligations which the church 
voluntarily assumes. Business is business. Pro- 
perly conducted, there can be no church or mis- 
sionary panic any more than, in case Wall-Street 
business be honestly conducted, there can be no 
Wall-Street panic. Shall the business men of a 
church keep to snug ways of managing their own 
concerns and at the same time let the Lord's 
business go haphazard at sixes and sevens? It 
may not be altogether easy, in every instance, to 
hit upon a plan which will work smoothly and ac- 
ceptably to all; but, the harder the problem, the 
more cheerfully will love to the Master welcome 



SYSTEM IN GIVING 143 

the privilege of solving it ; trusting in Him for 
the wisdom necessary to solve it rightly. 

From the building and repairing of the temple 
in the Old Testament to the widow's mite in the 
New comes the assurance of God's blessing on 
gifts laid freely on the altar of His love. Per- 
haps we have no more beautiful example than that 
of the good king, Josiah. He sought earnestly 
to God for wisdom. His prayer was answered 
by his being stirred up to repair the temple which 
a second time had fallen into decay: "Let the 
keepers of the temple-door deliver the money 
into the hands of the doers of the work that have 
the oversight of the Lord's house; and let them 
give it to the doers of the work which is in the 
house ; unto carpenters and builders and masons, 
and to buy timber and hewn stone to repair the 
house." 

How did God bless that undertaking? In the 
process of repairing, the lost "book of the Law" 
was found which "had been either neglected and 
mislaid carelessly or maliciously concealed;" and, 
as the result of finding and reading the book, a 
glorious revival of religion followed, to the spirit- 
ual improvement and uplifting joy of the nation. 

Let money be now poured into the Lord's treas- 
ury for the support of all His workers in all His 
fields, at home and abroad, and He will make His 
Bible a new Bible and His truth new truth for 
ourselves, for our country, and for the world. 



XXXIII 

THE GREATER OF TWO GREAT 
VICTORIES 

So the armed men left the captives and the spoil 
before the princes and the congregation.. II Chron. 
28:14. 

The beautiful spirit of compassion shown 
toward the sufferers from earthquake and fire in 
Southern Italy, although justly set down to the 
credit of the teachings and example of Christ, 
was yet more than paralleled, some seven centu- 
ries before the Christian era, by what befell the 
people then living on the Eastern shore of the 
same great inland sea, whose Western shore was 
as lately the scene of such awful devastation. 

The people of whom I speak had been attacked 
by the combined enemies of Syria and Israel. 
They had fought a double battle, had suffered a 
double defeat; and this two-fold defeat had been 
followed by a twofold deportation. The Syrian 
King had carried away a great multitude of the 
captives to Damascus. Israel smites Judah's 
King with a great slaughter, makes prisoners by 
the hundred thousand of men, women and chil- 
dren, robs them of their possessions and brings 
the spoil to Samaria — a far deeper sorrow than 
it would have been, had their belongings been 
swallowed up by an earthquake or destroyed by 
fire. 

144 



TWO GREAT VICTORIES 145 

As these Samaritan conquerors, flushed with 
the joy of victory and exulting proudly over the 
downfall of their traditional enemies, draw near 
to their own royal city, they are, all at once, 
strangely interrupted in their advance. They 
find themselves confronted by a "prophet of the 
Lord." The column halts to see by what message 
this holy man of God dares silence the rejoicing 
of his victorious countrymen. It proves to be a 
message such as only a true prophet of God 
would have had the courage to deliver: "Behold, 
because the Lord God of your fathers was wroth 
with Judah, He has delivered them into your 
hand, and you have slain them in a rage that 
reacheth up to heaven. And now you intend to 
keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem 
for bondmen and bondwomen unto you. But are 
there not with you, even with you, sins against 
the Lord your God? Now, hear me therefore, and 
deliver the captives again which you have taken 
of your brethren; for the fierce anger of the 
Lord is upon you." 

A most timely rebuke and admonition, most 
graciously sent, most faithfully uttered, and 
most sensibly and wisely taken! 

The program for a grand triumphal entry into 
Samaria is at once reversed — changed from any 
further humiliation of the despoiled and heart- 
broken captives to the subjecting of their own 
haughty and revengeful spirit to the purer and 
nobler dictates of humanity and mercy. The bat- 



146 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

talions detailed to guard the prisoners give up 
their charge and "leave them and the spoil in the 
hands of the princes and of the whole concourse 
of the people." The appointing of a relief -com- 
mittee is next in order. The men thus named 
enter promptly and heartily into the work : "They 
rise up and take the captives, and with the spoil 
clothe all that are naked among them, and give 
them to eat and to drink, and anoint them, and 
carry the feeble among them upon asses and bring 
them to Jericho." Then without more ado, they 
return to Samaria. 

Great-minded, large-hearted Samaritans ! An 
example for that later countryman of yours who, 
near that same "city of palm trees," rescued a 
half -dead traveler by the wayside — and, like him, 
worthy to be commemorated in the more than 
monumental pages of divine inspiration! And 
beside the honor, what increase of purest happi- 
ness for you! The beaming faces of these be- 
friended prisoners, how much pleasanter a sight 
than the gleam of conquering ensigns ; than the 
flash of victorious swords ! These forlorn captives 
whose half -naked bodies you have clothed, whose 
bare and bleeding feet you have shod, whose hun- 
ger and thirst you have appeased, whose heads 
you did not forget to anoint (adding the cour- 
tesy of luxury to the promptings of humanity) ; 
the sick and feeble whom you tenderly carried — 
yes, this defeated, dejected, despairing band of 
exiles whom, thus generously cared for, you have 



TWO GREAT VICTORIES 147 

restored to their former condition and helped to 
re-establish in their dear old homes — how much 
more their tears of happy and loving thankful- 
ness are worth to you than would or could have 
been their enforced toil in what would have been 
to them your most sad and homesick service! 
How much sweeter than the clangor of boasting 
trumpets is to you the music of mercy's gentle 
voice; and, with it, the grateful breathings of 
answering hearts calling down by prayer on you, 
your children and your nation, the richest bless- 
ings of heaven ! 

How incalculably greater was that of the two 
great victories then and there won. Nature — are 
we, at times, tempted, bitterly tempted, to call her 
cruel? Yet, in even her most awful visitations 
there come calculable pauses. But human Nature 
— to what unforeseen, unimagined extremes of 
cruelty will it go, once are let loose the unre- 
strained passions of pride, jealousy, ambition or 
revenge ! Our depraved humanity may well learn 
the lesson of humility from the devastating con- 
vulsions of Nature. Not only has the loss of life 
and treasure occasioned by her outbreaks of vio- 
lence been really insignificant compared with the 
sweeping desolations of war, but never is it hers, 
as it is not seldom the infamy of war, to add gra- 
tuitous insult to the suffering caused by her 
plagues, earthquakes, fires or floods. 



XXXIV 

GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 

Bless the Lord . . . and forget not all his bene- 
fits. Ps. 103:2. 

Literally translated, the word "benefit" means 
"good" of some sort "done" to the person on 
whom the benefit is bestowed. 

But (a step further) to do one good means to 
contribute in some way to that one's pleasure, 
happiness or advantage. It is because we both 
enjoy and are nourished by it, that we pronounce 
"good" the food of which we daily partake. We 
say of a well played or well sung piece, of an ex- 
cellent picture, of a beautiful landscape, of a fine 
poem, "They are good," by which is meant simply 
that in these things we find a measure of gratifi- 
cation. And, in general, whoever calls into exer- 
cise any susceptibility we may have of true and 
rational enjoyment does us a good; confers on us 
a "benefit." 

Whoever, again, does us an intended good 
shows by so doing that he feels kindly toward 
us. Otherwise, why seek to gratify or aid us? A 
benefit, then, is a sure token of both interest and 
affection. A good act is a kind act. Back of the 
good done is some one's good-will. 

In such "good-will" there is more, incom- 
parably more, than there is in the gift itself. 
There was more in the beautiful seal sent to 

148 



GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 149 

Goethe, the idea of which was conceived by the 
then young Carlyle and the design of which (the 
serpent of eternity encircling a star, with the 
legend "Unhasting, Unresting") was sketched by 
Mrs. Carlyle — there was vastly more in the seal 
than in the seal itself — "A memorial," as the giv- 
ers wrote, "of the gratitude we owe you, and 
which we think the whole world owes you." 

And, as there is more in the gift than the gift, 
so in the thanks for the gift is there more than 
the thanks. 

What follows, then? This, that the receiving 
of a benefit excites, or should excite, in the recipi- 
ent, a feeling quite distinct from, and far above, 
that which comes from any advantage or enjoy- 
ment from the good itself. Coming home, of an 
evening, you find awaiting you a gift of which 
you had not beforehand had either knowledge or 
expectation. Naturally, your first thought is 
about the gift — what a help, comfort or pleasure 
it will be to you. But you do not dwell long on 
that thought alone. You come upon the name of 
the giver, and now the gift speaks not alone, or 
chiefly, to the supplied need or gratified taste; it 
now comes as an appeal to your heart ; a challenge 
to your love ; and this makes the offering dear to 
you far beyond its power of imparting to you any 
gratification whatever. You might have gotten 
the self -same thing by purchase, but with what a 
different feeling would you then have regarded it ! 
The seller you may not love; the giver, you do. 



150 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

Thus good, as the expression of good-n-ill, accom- 
plishes its truest and best end, only when it begets 
good-will, in turn. The gratification ends in ut- 
ter selfishness unless it awakens gratitude. 

This statement we find beautifully illustrated, 
and confirmed by noticing that these two words, 
"gratification" and "gratitude" have precisely 
the same root ; a word, namely, which means kind- 
ness, or good-will. This not only makes them He 
very near to one another on the same page of the 
dictionary, but it points with delightful signifi- 
cance to the fact that they are joined lovingly to- 
gether on the same leaf of the rightfully inter- 
preting heart. 

This, too, gives answer to the question which a 
Christian friend once asked earnestly of me, "How 
is it that we can bless God? He blesses us, we 
know, by giving us no end of things which we 
not only need, but which we could not possibly 
do without. But how can we bless Him since He 
can easily enough dispense with even the best and 
costliest of our gifts?" In precisely the same 
sense, is the answer, although in a different way. 
The spirit of blessing is the same in both; kind- 
ness, good-will, affection. God blesses us by His 
good gifts : we bless Him by the loving acknowl- 
edgment of His loving acts. 

Gifts, however beautiful or costly, are but 
shadows, and like shadows they pass away. Is 
the gift a gem? It may be crushed, stolen or lost. 
Is it a more brilliant gem of speech ? Crystallized 



GRATIFICATION AND GRATITUDE 151 

in words of whatever tongue, yet all tongues 
shall cease. Is knowledge the gem? It shall van- 
ish away. The love, of which the gift is but the 
momentary expression, "abides." 



XXXV 

INTERCESSION FOR THE 
ILL-DESERVING 

And Abraham stood yet before the Lord. Gen. 
18:22. 

There was no very urgent reason, as men 
would say, why Abraham should interest himself 
particularly in the fate of Sodom, or even of his 
nephew who lived there. Were not the people of 
Sodom "wicked and sinners before the Lord ex- 
ceedingly"? Was not that city a plague-spot on 
God's fair earth, corrupted and corrupting, pois- 
oned and poisoning, and would it not be every 
way better that such a sink of iniquity be 
cleansed by the potent disinfection of brimstone 
and fire? And as for Lot, did he not, in utter 
disregard of what was due to the age and prior 
claim of his uncle, and taking mean advantage 
of his uncle's generosity, did he not choose the 
fertile valley of the Jordan for his own pasture- 
grounds and deliberately pitch his tent toward 
Sodom? And did he not, after that he had be- 
come thoroughly acquainted with the pollutions 
of the town, did he not take his family there and 
make it his chosen residence? And would it not, 
then, have been a fitting recompense had his in- 
jured uncle left him to shift for himself as best 
he could in the coming overthrow? 

That would indeed have been the way of the 

152 



THE ILL-DESERVING 153 

world — the spirit which leads the man who has 
attained all of rank, power and wealth which he 
desires, to leave his fellows to struggle alone with 
their temptations, hardships and dangers, and 
to excuse their own neglect by the heartless old 
plea, "Am I my brother's keeper? Things must 
take their course. It is no more than right that he 
suffer the consequence of his folly." 

Abraham does better. His own affairs are 
indeed satisfactorily adjusted, his own interests 
are well looked after, his own safety is assured, 
his glory as founder of a great nation is fully 
guaranteed. Still he has more to ask. "He 
stands yet before the Lord." No sooner have the 
two men turned their faces toward the doomed 
city than he begins that humble, earnest, impor- 
tunate intercession which has ever since been the 
guide and encouragement of God's people in their 
supplications for the worst of sinners. 



XXXVI 

SLANDER— ITS METHODS, MOTIVES 
AND RESULTS 

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who 
shall dwell in thy holy hill? . . . He that backbit- 
eth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neigh- 
bor, nor taheth up a reproach against his neighbor. 
Ps. 15:1,3. 

I begin with tailor-made slander ; with the man 
who manufactures falsehoods out of whole cloth 
— stories which have not, and which he knows 
have not, a shadow of foundation. 

Next comes the patchwork calumniator. 
Though not an out-and-out liar, he does more 
harm than if he were, since his calumnies are less 
easily refuted. What he does is to pick the worst 
things out of what is partially true and so put 
them together as to create in the public mind a 
thoroughly false impression. By putting the 
worst construction possible on what may have been 
said or done, saying not a word about alleviating 
circumstances, minimizing the good and maxi- 
mizing the bad, he sends out a damaging report 
which is, in a way, worse than downright false- 
hood. The whole truth not being told and what 
is told being falsely colored, an ingenious patch- 
work of ill-assorted, mutilated facts is stealthily 
thrown over the back of a neighbor from behind, 
who, thus shamelessly attired, goes forth to be 
suspected by the good and mocked by the vile. 

154 



SLANDER 155 

Next comes the truth-telling backbiter who 
tells of faults that have come to his personal 
knowledge, but which he is in duty and honor 
bound to keep to himself; telling them gratu- 
itously with the two-fold mean intent; first, of 
letting the fault be known ; and, second, by going 
on to excuse it, of gaining for himself a reputa- 
tion for charitableness. Instead of "seeking love 
by covering the transgression," he seeks a selfish 
gain by revealing it. Were he "of a faithful 
spirit, he would conceal the matter." 

He, again, is involved in like guilt who helps 
to circulate incriminating reports, even though 
he may have had nothing to do with originating 
them. Many do this who would scorn to do the 
other. They hold themselves blameless if they tell 
only what they hear. On the contrary, it is just 
this tale-bearing that makes most of the trouble. 
Were there none to retail his wares, the fabricator 
of slander would soon have to go out of business. 
He derives all his importance and all his success 
from those who lend their more respectable names 
to his falsehoods or exaggerations. "This is that 
which maintains and gives subsistence to calumny, 
which would starve and die of itself if no one gave 
it a lodging. When malice pours it out, if our 
ears be shut against it and there be no vessel to 
receive it, it would fall like water upon the ground 
and could no more be gathered up." 

To the question, "Lord, who shall abide in thy 
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?" 



156 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

comes for answer, "he that backbiteth not with his 
tongue ;" but it is added, "Nor he that tdketh up 
a reproach against his neighbor." "Where there 
is no tale-bearing, the strife ceaseth." Since the 
Hebrew word for talebearer signifies a "peddler," 
we have him here described as one "who picks up 
ill-natured stories at one house and utters them at 
another, bartering slanders by way of exchange." 
Again, we violate the spirit of the ninth com- 
mandment whenever we entertain and countenance 
damaging rumors, though we may take no part in 
either starting or spreading them. The essence 
of the sin consists in our being glad to hear such 
reports, and to have them disseminated; in our 
being inwardly pleased to see others brought into 
disrepute. We are bound, on the contrary, not to 
receive remarks obnoxious to the good name of 
our fellows: and particularly of those to whom 
we would appear friendly. "Thou shalt not re- 
ceive (marginal reading) a false report." "The 
north wind driveth away rain, so doth an angry 
countenance a backbiting tongue." We are not 
to stand silent and see a neighbor's fair reputa- 
tion slaughtered before our very eyes. Promptly, 
decidedly and manfully we are to defend a neigh- 
bor's good name when it is unjustly or causelessly 
assailed. And our defence should be hearty and 
whole-souled — not "prefacing our defence with a 
feigned regret and semblance of pitying our 
neighbor and adding withal some words of com- 
mending him in somewhat else." 



SLANDER 157 

Then there is pantomime slander. "A 
naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a 
froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he 
teacheth with his fingers; frowardness is in his 
heart; he deviseth mischief continually; he sow- 
eth discord." This back-biting with a wink, a 
word, a gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, a leer, 
a cough, a laugh, a sentence half uttered and not 
completed, is often the crudest kind of slander — 
just enough being said or done to allow full play 
to the busy imaginations of those who hear — the 
dastardly trick of shrewd men who do the mis- 
chief, but who know how to shift the responsi- 
bility upon less dishonest people ; who keep them- 
selves in the background while secretly they work 
the wires ; whisperers who say in a confidential un- 
dertone what they mean that others shall speak 
out plainly and openly. 

MOTIVES TO SLANDER 

With some it is sheer envy. "At the expense 
of the good name and esteem of others the back- 
biter seeks to increase his own ; out of others' ruins 
to build up himself, and for this reason inclines 
always to hear and speak of the imperfections 
and dispraise of others rather than to their ad- 
vantage. The good man needs not this dishon- 
est way to raise himself, but is glad to see what- 
ever is praiseworthy flourish in whomsoever. 
Lover of God and of His glory, he is glad to see 
many enriched with His best gifts." 

With others the secret dragging down of a 



158 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

neighbor's good standing is the working out of a 
settled, deep-seated, but carefully concealed pur- 
pose of revenge for some real or fancied injury 
or affront. The revenger speaks neither good or 
bad, but waits and watches for the fit time when 
his purpose can be most safely and surely accom- 
plished. 

With others, again, the sin has its root in a 
thoughtless propensity to gossip; it is so much 
easier for them to talk about people than about 
anything else. 

THE EVILS OF SLANDER 

The harm from evil-speaking is by no means 
confined to those thus spoken against. One after 
another becomes entangled in this net of Satan. 
Friends take sides. Harsh censures provoke un- 
charitable speeches in return until, at length, an 
entire neighborhood (or church, it may be) is in- 
volved in broil and strife. Families are set at 
variance, friends converted into enemies, neigh- 
bors into strangers. Harmony, hospitality and 
peace sicken and die, and every office of kindness 
is interrupted. A disparaging remark concerning 
a parent to a child, concerning a teacher to a 
pupil, concerning a pastor to a parishioner, may 
destroy or greatly lessen the influence of parent, 
teacher or pastor over those to whom, or in whose 
hearing the injurious remark is made. No won- 
der, if from such seed be reaped a harvest of in- 
subordination, discord and revolt. "To the hap- 
piness of good neighborhood succeeds a train of 



SLANDER 159 

groveling, base, serpentine hostilities, depraving 
all who practice them and distressing all against 
whom they are practised." 

"It cannot be supposed that in such a course of 
hostilities against his f ellowmen the slanderer will 
escape the common resentment of those whom he 
has injured. An enemy to all men, all men at 
length become enemies to him. Such as have 
smarted from his tongue will take care to make 
him smart in return. He is likely to be excluded 
in due time from all decent society, and to be 
openly treated to indignities which he knows not 
how to brook yet dare not resist." 

Hence the truth of the proverb that "the back- 
biter wounds three at once — him against whom 
he speaks, him who hears, and, most of all, him- 
self." 



XXXVII 

THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 

Fools! did not he that made that which is without 
make that which is within, also? Luke 11:40. 

It is at a morning hour, and before He has 
broken His fast of the night, that Jesus is ad- 
dressing a great, out-door, surging crowd of 
eager listeners. Naturally, He is in need of bod- 
ily refreshment. The Pharisee, therefore, who 
makes bold to interrupt the speaking by inviting 
the speaker to his house for breakfast has set 
down to his credit an act of true and most season- 
ably offered kindness. As the invitation is 
promptly accepted, why is the accompanying and 
customary invitation to wash before eating just 
as promptly declined? 

Certainly not because Jesus sees anything 
wrong in the custom itself. Did He not, on an- 
other occasion, administer a delicate reproof to 
another Pharisee for having neglected so usual 
a mark of social courtesy? In the present in- 
stance, the reason for abstaining lies in the su- 
perstitious notion which leads this Pharisee to 
"marvel" at the omission. The simple non-com- 
pliance with a social custom would be too small a 
matter to make him "marvel." No, but he is a 
slave to the tradition that the man is morally de- 
filed who ventures to eat with unwashen hands. 
With the same religious scrupulosity he washes 

160 



THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 161 

cups, pots, couches and brazen vessels, and many 
other like things he does. He fasts often. He is 
strict to pay his tithes. He tithes even the small- 
est herbs, the mint and the rue, of his garden. He 
lays conscientious stress on all these little details. 
He makes many uncalled-for additions to even the 
ceremonial requirements of the law. 

While doing this, however, he neglects the one 
and the only really essential thing — the state of 
his heart. He makes everything of the outside, 
having little thought or care for that which is 
within. So he be punctilious in outwardly wor- 
shipping of God, it matters little how he feel 
toward, or how he treat, his fellow men. If he 
make "long prayers," and make them long 
enough, he then has no scruple about enriching 
himself by oppressing the poor, even to the point 
of devouring widows' houses. The motive of his 
religious performances is of no account with him, 
so the motions be gone through with. With him 
motive and motion are one. When he fasts, he 
wants people to know it. He calls their attention 
to it by disfiguring his face. When he gives 
alms, he wants people to know that. He employs 
a trumpeter for that purpose. 

At the breakfast table by which we now sup- 
pose ourselves standing, Jesus takes occasion to 
expose the folly of this Phariseeism. He shows 
that it is neither more or less than sheer hypoc- 
risy ; and he furthermore shows that such hypoc- 
risy is foolish. "Fools," He says. "What fools !" 



162 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

would be our impatient, sarcastic way of saying 
it. 

He does not say, "Ye wicked." Folly is not 
necessarily wickedness. Of course, the choice of 
a wrong end is as wicked as it is foolish. But 
folly, as such, consists simply in the use of means 
which are ill-adapted to secure the end in view, 
whatever that end may be. Two lawmakers may 
be equally honest ; they may wish, one as truly as 
the other, that only such laws shall be passed as 
will be for the public good. Yet one of them 
may be foolish and the other wise. The foolish 
lawmaker, like the sincere but foolish reformer, 
may defeat the very end he has in view, since 
"Good motive even is unavailing without good 
method." 

The formalist is foolish in that he defeats his 
own purpose. Why does he go through the forms 
of devotion? Only because he hopes to gain by 
his hypocrisy. But success depends on his play- 
ing the hypocrite so successfully as to avoid de- 
tection. If those whom he fancies he is deceiving 
see through the disguise, he not only misses the 
mark, but he is worse off than he was before he 
put himself in the way of being detected. He not 
only gains nothing; he loses incalculably. He 
thought to gain respect. Instead, he incurs the 
scorn of those on whom he thinks to impose. 

It is hazardous always to attempt this even 
with men. Still with men it is not absolutely fool- 
ish, since men do and must, as a rule, look only on 



THE FOOLISH FORMALIST 163 

the outside of things. They cannot see the heart, 
and thus it is that a man may make a mask so per- 
fect that men shall not see that it is a mask, at all. 
The man who tries to palm himself off on the 
world for what he is not, is not, therefore, abso- 
lutely and necessarily, a fool. 

But the man is el fool, always and absolutely, 
who tries to impersonate either piety or charity 
before God. God sees behind the mask as clearly 
as He sees the mask. With Him, therefore, the 
self -flattering formalist misses his mark. Think- 
ing to win favor with God as well as with men, 
he incurs, instead, only the all-seeing One's most 
pronounced displeasure. 

Jesus exposes and illustrates this supreme folly, 
thus : "Now do you, Pharisees, make clean the out- 
side of the cup and the platter, but your inward 
part is full of ravening and wickedness. Fools ! 
Did not He that made that which is without make 
that which is within, also?" 

What would any one of us think of the man 
who, under the guise of friendliness, should offer 
us a cup however beautifully and elaborately de- 
signed and decorated, if upon looking into it we 
should see a clear proof that some selfish motive 
lay at the bottom of the gift? Just as little does 
God care for mere forms of worship — the gor- 
geous cathedral, the grand church-edifice, the 
elaborate singing, the floral decorations, the elo- 
quent prayer, the polished discourse, the chanted 
creed, the Lord's Prayer recited in unison. It 



164 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

goes without saying that these are all right and 
acceptable to God, provided they are but the out- 
ward expression of truly thankful, adoring, peni- 
tent and loving hearts. Yet, considering the fas- 
cination which fixed forms of worship have to the 
unreflecting, is not the self-deception of symbol- 
atry a danger and a sin against which even the 
most sincere worshippers should be continually on 
their guard? 



XXXVIII 

TWO KINDS OF RELIGION, AND THE 
BETTER OF THE TWO 

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the 
one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: 
God, I thank thee that I am not as other men; ex- 
tortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this pub- 
lican; I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all 
that I possess. 

And the publican, standing afar off, would not 
lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote 
upon his breast, saying: God be merciful to me, a 
sinner. Luke 18: 10-13. 

In creed, these two men are alike. They be- 
lieve, one as fully as the other, that God is 
pleased with those who do right and displeased 
with those who do wrong ; and that to be on good 
terms with God is therefore, or should be, every 
man's chief concern. 

There is this difference, however. One of these 
two men is quite at his ease because he has never 
thought of doubting but that he is on the very 
best of terms with God, already. His prayer 
reads like a good prayer, certainly — a good 
prayer of a good man. He asks God for noth- 
ing ; he has only thanks to give for what God has 
already done for him. And what this Pharisee 
thanks God for is the very best thing that any 
man can pray for ; or, if he has it, that he has the 

165 



166 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

greatest reason to be thankful for — not that he is 
such a learned, highly respected, well-to-do man — 
no, but that he is such an out-and-out good man ; 
that he has been led of God to give first consider- 
ation to the scrupulous performance of his de- 
votional duties. 

Naturally, too, it would seem to be still greater 
cause for thanksgiving, if a man be not only 
good, but if he cannot but see that he is better 
than other men. It is so with this Pharisee. 
Other men are extortioners ; he, thank God, is not 
one of them. Other men are unjust ; he is not one 
of them either, thank God. Other men are adul- 
terers ; again, God be praised, he is not an adul- 
terer. No doubt, he might have made his list of 
negations longer. He did, in fact, make it 
longer; as long as the added list of mean, dis- 
loyal and dishonest things for the doing of which 
he held the average publican in such supreme con- 
tempt. 

Nor is it merely for the bad things he had not 
done that he is thankful to God; but even more, 
perhaps, for the good things he has done. Was 
it not a good thing to fast, now and then? Yes, 
we are all in danger, at least three times every 
day, of either eating and drinking what is not 
good for us ; or, if not that, of eating and drink- 
ing more than is good for us. Fasting, now and 
then, if done in the right way, helps toward keep- 
ing us from becoming slaves to these dangerous 
appetites. And, this Pharisee fasts regularly and 



TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 167 

often; as often as twice every week. Another 
thing he says he has done; he has paid his 
"church-dues," as we would now call them — the 
tithes assessed on his property for the support of 
the priests, the maintenance of the synagogue and 
temple worship and for charity to the poor. And 
here, certainly, he makes a good point in his own 
favor. He sends in an honest, a complete list ; "I 
pay tithes of all that I possess ; yes, even to the 
anise, cummin and rue of my garden." That was 
a good thing under the Old Testament way of do- 
ing such things, and it is just as good a thing now 
under our New Testament way. It is something, 
now, for any man to be sincerely thankful for, if 
he find it in his heart to give as God has pros- 
pered him for the support and spread of the gos- 
pel of Christ and for the comfort of those in need. 
This Pharisee's prayer is, therefore, an excep- 
tionally good prayer — that is, if he be at heart 
the exceptionally good man he believes himself to 
be. 

We turn now to the other man's prayer ; to the 
prayer of the publican. 

It is the exact opposite, we see, to the prayer 
of the Pharisee ; the exact opposite in that he has 
nothing good, absolutely nothing, to say for him- 
self. But, why not? Has not he, too, his good 
points? Is he not kind to those who are kind to 
him? Is he not prompt to salute his brethren? 
To exchange civilities with his friends? Is he 
not a man of steady-going, business habits? He 



168 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

has, no doubt, a comfortable home, and to his hos- 
pitable table does he not invite his friends ; and, 
at times, even strangers? There are plenty of 
worse men ; men who go by the name of "sinners" 
— men, yes and women too, who do things he 
would never even think of doing ; men and women 
who are in a discredited class by themselves. For, 
be it remembered, the fault-finding Pharisees and 
scribes did not ask the disciples of Jesus: "Why 
eateth your Master with publicans who are such 
notorious sinners"? The question was: "Why 
eateth your Master with publicans and sinners"? 
— both classes despised, but for very different rea- 
sons. 

Had the publican of my text had the Phari- 
see's disposition he, like the Pharisee, would have 
thanked God that he was not like other men: 
idlers, vagabonds, debauchees, adulterers. He, 
also, would have rehearsed to God some of the 
good things he had done ; that he had always been 
polite to those who were polite to him, and how 
he had lent money to those who had lent money to 
him. 

But not a word of all this. And why? Be- 
cause it has been given him to see that this ex- 
change of neighborly good offices is, after all, 
only a kind of refined selfishness ; done not out of 
that true, heart-love which God requires ; and that 
such supreme regard for one's own pleasure, or 
advantage is the real root of all, of even the worst, 
evil. He sees that, at heart, he is as bad as any 



TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 169 

of those whom, in common with people generally, 
he has been in the habit of calling "sinners." In- 
deed, he now calls himself "a sinner." And Oh, 
how great a sinner does he now see himself to be ! 
How unworthy in the sight of Him who judges 
not by the outward appearance but by the inner- 
most secrets of the heart. He now sees what he 
had never so much as dreamed of before, that he 
has always put love of self before love to God and 
his neighbor; that, therefore, he has never had 
any true, unselfish love for either. He has no ex- 
cuse to offer; he asks for no indulgence on the 
ground of either ignorance, heredity or environ- 
ment. He acknowledges himself a "sinner" 
whose one great need is that he be forgiven. So 
heart-broken is he over his sins that he cannot so 
much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smites 
upon his breast, crying, "God be merciful to me, 
a sinner." 

Here, then, are the two kinds of religion set be- 
fore us by our Lord in this parable — one, a self- 
congratulating, self -justifying religion; the 
other, a self -humbling, sin-confessing, God- justi- 
fying religion. Which is the better of the two? 

Suppose the question to be, "Which is, on the 
whole, the better of two specified towns to live 
in ?" Here is a man who has lived in one of these 
towns, only; has never seen the other and knows 
nothing of it, except by hearsay. Here is an- 
other man who has lived in both towns; who is, 
therefore in a condition to make an intelligent 
comparison between them. 



170 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

Fortunately for us, we know of a man who had 
made thorough trial of both these religions. He 
compares the two for us ; or, rather, he has found 
one of them so much better than the other that he 
says there is no comparison between them. There 
were, he admits, some good points about the first ; 
the self-complacent, self-sufficient, self -justifying 
kind. He goes on to enumerate these good points, 
adding that he has himself more of them to his 
credit than has any other man he knows. "I was 
dedicated to God," he says, "in earliest infancy. 
I had a pious ancestry, reaching back nearly two 
thousand years. I was a religionist of the strict- 
est sort ; was scrupulously careful to do all the lit- 
tle traditional things of our ceremonial law. As 
to our moral code, I was as careful about observ- 
ing that as I was about compliance with our ec- 
clesiastical requirements. Touching that right- 
eousness, also, I was absolutely blameless. In 
short, I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews and a Phar- 
isee of the Pharisees. So firmly convinced, in- 
deed, was I that this religion of ours was the only 
true religion, that I did my best to put down and 
stamp out a certain new and contrary religion 
that was springing up around us — proclaiming 
the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God 
by simple faith in one who, as I firmly believed, 
was a self-seeking imposter, drawing multitudes 
after him to their undoing." 

All at once, however, this man is made to see 
how lamentably and how dangerously mistaken he 



TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 171 

has been about this same Jesus ; how blind to that 
very promise of a Deliverer which "the twelve 
tribes" had been, day and night, praying God to 
fulfill. Then when the Deliverer came, they 
killed Him, and went on killing or imprisoning 
His disciples. He was, as he himself confessed, 
the foremost one of these persecutors. "I was," 
he says, "exceedingly mad against them. I per- 
secuted them even to strange cities, and if ever the 
question came up whether they should be killed 
or not, I not only cast my vote aganist them, but 
I did it with a right good will,* for I surely 
thought that I was doing God service by so 
doing." 

Little wonder, then, that he is deeply humbled 
now that Jesus has caused the scales to fall from 
his eyes, so that he sees what a proud and self- 
righteous heart lay under the deceitful semblance 
of this extraordinary zeal for God. No wonder 
he feels himself to be almost past hope of forgive- 
ness ; that he would, indeed, have despaired of ob- 
taining forgiveness, but that he had sinned "ig- 
norantly, in unbelief." Behold, now, the miracle 
of grace by which Saul, the self -exalting Phari- 
see, is changed into Paul, the self -humbling pub- 
lican ! "God be merciful to me, the chief of sin- 
ners," is now his most earnest prayer. 

He "obtains" mercy. And now he knows Christ 
as the Saviour through whom have come to him 



*The Greek has this intensive meaning. 



172 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

an enlightened conscience, a penitent and contrite 
heart, and peace with God. So exceedingly pre- 
cious is this knowledge of Christ to him that he 
now makes absolutely nothing of what he had 
made everything of, before. He finds that what 
he had so fondly thought to be gold is counter- 
feit, and worse than worthless. "The things that 
were gain to me," he says, "those I count as loss 
for Christ ; and not those things only, but I count 
everything else but loss ; and the reason for my 
doing so is that I find the knowledge of Christ is 
so much better; so unspeakably better that, in- 
stead of counting it a sacrifice, what I have given 
up seems to me only as so much trash to be thrown 
on the rubbish-pile, so I may make sure of win- 
ning Christ, and of being found in Him, not hav- 
ing my own righteousness which is of the law, but 
that which is through the faith of Christ; the 
righteousness which is of God by faith." 

It is not said (be it carefully noted) that the 
"certain" to whom the parable was spoken were 
either Pharisees or publicans. There may have 
been among them some of both. All Pharisees 
were not hypocrites. Paul was not. Neither, we 
may believe, was the Pharisee of our Lord's 
parable. Instead of being ostentatiously "long," 
his prayer was unusually short ; offered, too, not 
in a synagogue or at a street corner, but in the 
temple — the "house of prayer." We have no 
ground for concluding that he was one of those 
who "devoured widows' houses." Some publicans, 



TWO KINDS OF RELIGION 173 

too, were honest — good husbands, fathers, neigh- 
bors and citizens. Such, no doubt, was Matthew ; 
first, the publican, and afterward, the apostle. No, 
the parable is directed not against Pharisees as 
such, but pointedly and particularly against those 
of whatever name or of no name who "trust in 
themselves that they are righteous, and despise 
others" ; who make little or no account of any 
whose morality, as they imagine, is either some- 
what less moral than their own, or is of a some- 
what less select sort. 

By all seriously disposed persons it will, of 
course, be readily admitted that of the two re- 
ligions set forth in this parable, the better must 
be that which is approved, accepted and rewarded 
by God. It is not enough that we worship. There 
are worshippers with whom God is not well pleased. 
There are prayers offered which were as well left 
unsaid. If, wishing to be sure and safe in so 
great a matter, any earnest inquirer finds himself 
unwilling to trust even so signal an experience as 
was that of Saul the Pharisee and Paul the pub- 
lican, let him rejoice that he has for his guidance 
the assurance of Jesus Himself that God "had re- 
spect" to the publican and his prayer, but that to 
the Pharisee and his prayer "He had not re- 
spect" ; that it was the publican who, as he left 
the temple, "went down to his house justified 
rather than the other." 



XXXIX 

HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 

And he made haste and came down and received 
Him joyfully. This day is salvation come to this 
house. For the Son of Man is come to seek and to 
save that which is lost. Luke 19: 6, 9, 10. 

Jesus is now on this, his third and his last jour- 
ney from Galilee to Jerusalem. He has reached 
Jericho. He needs no introduction ; his fame has 
preceded him. So extensively has He travelled 
during the three years of his public ministry, so 
astonishing the doctrines He has taught and the 
deeds He has wrought, that his name has become 
a household word in even the remotest corner of 
the land. He is everywhere spoken of as the man 
who makes it his business to go about doing good ; 
the man who not only preaches a life of supreme 
love to God and equal love to one's neighbor, but 
whose own life stands squarely with his preaching. 
Nowhere do people tire of hearing and telling the 
beautiful story of his love ; of his compassion for 
the sick; for the deaf, dumb, and blind; for the 
bereaved; for the poor, and the oppressed; for 
the most despised of outcast sinners — the story 
that He has so much at heart the wants and suffer- 
ings of others as to make little account of his 
own. 

Such being the celebrity He has gained, we 
should of ourselves infer the eagerness of all 

174 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 175 

classes of people to see and to hear Him. "Of 
course," we say, as we read such accounts as these, 
that "His fame went throughout all Syria ;" that 
"there followed Him great multitudes of people 
from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and 
Judea and from beyond Jordan" — the multitudes 
made up largely, it is true, of those seeking in^ 
struction or cure, but in greater number, of peo- 
ple impelled by a natural curiosity not only to 
hear and see such wonderful things said and done, 
but even more to get a near sight of the man who 
says and does them. Just as, to-day, men of all 
political beliefs come from far and near to see 
with their own eyes the man who has won the 
highest honor in the nation's gift. 

Such an excited crowd now surrounds and ac- 
companies Jesus as He enters and passes through 
the city of Jericho. How will the people of the 
town, and especially its most influential citizens, 
receive Him? That is a question which it is of 
greater concern for them to answer than it is for 
Him. He is not wondering nervously whether the 
political or the ecclesiastical magnates will extend 
him a welcome in behalf of the city. He desires 
no compliments, acceptance of which might em- 
barrass his uttering woes against iniquity in high 
places as well as in low, or which might shake his 
standing with the people at large as a divinely 
authorized teacher of religion and morals. Dis- 
honest officials will naturally enough either fight, 
or fight shy of, this man whose exposures and re- 



176 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

bukes tend to bring both themselves and their con- 
duct into openly pronounced popular disesteem. 

One such official is living in Jericho. He is a 
publican; one, that is, who is engaged in doing 
business for the public. His business is to ap- 
praise property and to assess and collect taxes. 
He is the town-treasurer. To assist him he has 
subordinates for whose conduct in office he is held 
responsible. He is "chief of the publicans." In 
this free country of ours we choose men to do this 
appraising and tax-collecting business for us. We 
pay them fixed salaries for doing it. But Syria 
is, at the time of my text, a conquered Roman 
province. The appointee buys from the govern- 
ment this appraising and tax-collecting privilege 
— his contract holding him to only the paying of 
a stipulated sum to the government, while what- 
ever more he may contrive in ways of his own 
choosing to gather in, he appropriates as so-called 
compensation for his so-called services — a unique 
field for graft, for the exercise of predatory ava- 
rice, limited only by its ability to wring from suf- 
fering and protesting but helpless citizens the last 
farthing unscrupulous greed is able to extort. It 
follows as a matter of course that, as a rule cer- 
tainly, this much despised office of publican will 
be neither sought nor accepted save by a man 
whose theory of life is this ; that on however low 
a social, intellectual, moral or religious plane a 
man may be, he is still the man for you, provided 
only that he have plenty of money; that, too, 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 177 

wholly regardless of his ways of getting it. But 
for a Jew to accept this office under the hated 
Roman rule, subjects him not only to the charge 
of avarice and dishonesty, but to the added odium 
of disloyalty to his oppressed nation. 

Zaccheus is just this kind of renegade publi- 
can; so blinded by his covetousness to the best 
things of life as deliberately to barter away the 
good-will of his fellow-citizens for his opportuni- 
ties of dishonest gain ; complacently content to be 
what he knows full well he is, the most disliked 
and the most generally disliked man in all Jericho. 

Not, paradoxical as it may seem, not that he 
thinks himself so bad a man, after all. Not that 
he has in so many words given up having any 
more to do with the moral and religious traditions 
of his race. Likely enough he continues to at- 
tend the synagogue-service and even contributes 
handsomely to its support. The ten command- 
ments are still a familiar story for him. He knows 
them by heart. He even natters himself that 
after a fashion he has kept them from his youth 
up. What! the eighth commandment, too? "Well, 
to be sure, Sinai did thunder as threateningly 
against the breaking of that commandment as of 
the other nine, but it thunders less forbiddingly 
now. The times are different, now. As Moses 
did not contemplate our modern ways of doing 
business, we must not take that particular injunc- 
tion too seriously. It may be well enough to re- 
tain it as part of an old historic symbol, the whole 



178 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

of which is after all chiefly venerable for its an- 
tiquity. Creeds and rabbis come and go, but busi- 
ness and my pile go on forever. Loving my 
neighbor as myself, strict honesty in all my deal- 
ings with him — yes, beautiful in theory, but (as 
shown by the lives of even our most devout, often 
fasting and most punctually tithe-paying lead- 
ers) impossible in practice." Pricks of conscience 
now and then? Yes, but Zaccheus, like a certain 
young lawyer, has learned to justify himself by 
that easy trick of evasion which consists in asking 
for definitions. "Love my neighbor as myself? 
Certainly, but then who is my neighbor?" Never 
yet a rabbi who has given him a satisfactory an- 
swer to that crucial, conscience-and-heart-search- 
ing question. Zaccheus will see whether or not 
this new and much be-praised prophet can do any- 
thing better. He will get a sight, if he can, of 
this travelling preacher who, if the half of all that 
is said of him be true, is the moral wonder of the 
age. "I will see this Jesus, who he is ; whether 
he looks it or not ; whether his figure, voice, man- 
ner and face measure up to the high character for 
which he stands." 

Zaccheus is sitting alone in his office, deeply 
pondering this important question. He must be 
quick, for by the steady tramping of feet outside 
he perceives that Jesus has entered and is passing 
through the town. He opens his office door, steps 
down and out, and joins the crowd. But, being 
little of stature, taller men obstruct his view. It 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 179 

would cost him a struggle to elbow his way 
through the crowd, and few, if any, would extend 
to him, at least, the courtesy of giving way. But 
aroused curiosity is fertile in expedients. He 
plunges down a side street, runs out of the town, 
gets well ahead of the procession, climbs a road- 
side tree and waits the coming of the throng. 
Mark tells us that it was as Jesus "went out of 
Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude 
of people" that He cured the two wayside beg- 
gars of blindness. Zaccheus as he looked down 
must have seen this miracle performed ; must have 
heard Jesus say to Bartimeus, "Thy faith hath 
made thee whole," and must have heard the joy- 
ous acclaim of the people glorifying God for hav- 
ing sent them so powerful as well as so compas- 
sionate a Savior. 

As he looks and listens, both the conscience and 
the heart of Zaccheus are most deeply touched — 
and that not by the miracle alone, but by Jesus 
himself ; the quiet dignity of his manner, the win- 
ning tones of his voice, the beaming benignity of 
his countenance. The publican and Jesus ! how 
at the opposite poles they are, the one from the 
other in both principle and practice ! "This man," 
Zaccheus is now saying to himself, "this man 
choosing for companions the poor, the neglected, 
the despised, the unfortunate, the disconsolate 
and discouraged; the deaf and dumb; the blind, 
the demoniac ; the morally degenerate and socially 
ostracized — bearing all their sins, sufferings and 



180 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

sorrows as though they were his very own; so 
bearing them as to remove them ; and all done out 
of pure, self-denying, unrecompensed good-will 
— and I? What am I and what has my manner 
of life been? Making heavier the already heavy 
burdens of the toiling and struggling poor; car- 
ing not how others may be impoverished, so that 
I through their poverty may be made rich. And 
the outcome of it all as unlike as our lives: He, 
loved; I, hated; He, followed; I, shunned; His 
fame, His glory; my fame, such as it is, my in- 
famy. How ashamed would I feel to meet this 
man, face to face; I, who am about the last man 
in the city, I am sure, whom He would care to see 
or to whom He would care to speak." 

But the Gospel of Jesus has from the first been 
full of wonderful and joyous surprises. It is in 
God's kingdom of grace that the unexpected hap- 
pens; the most unexpected of all. One of these 
blessed surprises now awaits Zaccheus. How mean 
and unworthy his own lif e now looks to him ; how 
noble and beautiful, in contrast, the character and 
life of Jesus ! As, stirred by these new and self- 
humiliating thoughts, he fixes his now yearning 
gaze on Jesus, lo, Jesus looks up and with a 
strange air of authority, says: "Make haste and 
come down, Zaccheus, for to-day I must abide in 
thy house." Never an invitation more promptly 
accepted ; never a command more quickly or more 
gladly obeyed. Zaccheus makes haste, he comes 
down, he receives Him joyfully. 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 181 

Another surprise, now, although of quite a dif- 
ferent sort. To the multitudes this honor shown 
to Zaccheus is a bewildering disappointment — this 
preacher of righteousness, this champion of the 
oppressed poor, this denouncer of woes against 
tyranny and corruption in high places, against 
rich men harder to be saved than for a camel to 
go through the needle's eye — to select for his host 
the most notoriously dishonest, falsely accusing 
man in all Jericho. No wonder at the sullen dis- 
content to which, not a few envious ones only, but 
to which all without exception give angry and 
audible expression. It is a sudden and sad blow 
to their confidence in their till now idolized leader. 
Very much as it would have been had Gen. Wash- 
ington, coming from Philadelphia to take com- 
mand of the Revolutionary army in Cambridge, 
chosen as a companion for his j ourney , in place of 
that staunch patriot, Gen. Schuyler, some dis- 
loyal tory, long known to be bitterly opposed to 
the American cause. Such a choice, had it been 
made, would have shaken, for a time at least, the 
people's confidence in their new commander. 

Zaccheus hears the murmuring. He sees that 
he is himself the occasoin of having the good name 
of the Master compromised with the wondering 
and complaining multitude. This will not do. 
He will not let it go so. An explanation is called 
for, and he is the man to make it. He knows well 
what the people do not know, that he has wrought 
no change in Jesus, but that Jesus has wrought 



182 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

a most blessed change in him. "Stop, Lord. Be- 
fore we take another step I must make this thing 
right with these old neighbors of mine." He 
neither crawls, cringes, crouches, nor bends. It 
is the erect posture that best becomes a noble deed. 
Standing squarely on his feet, he turns to Jesus 
and makes, in a manly way, this manly confes- 
sion : "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
to the poor, and if I have taken anything from 
any man by false accusation, I restore him four- 
fold." "No longer, then, the avaricious, dishon- 
est, hard-hearted official from whose false ap- 
praisements and assessments we have so long and 
so grievously suffered. Gone to be guest of a man 
that is a sinner? Yes, but why were we so blind 
as to forget that He has from the first been known 
as a friend, as the friend, of publicans and sin- 
ners ; that He has before this eaten with them at 
their home-tables?" Oh, how happily are their 
doubts now removed, their murmurings silenced, 
and their hearts warmed, as it is borne in upon 
them anew that eating and drinking with even the 
worst of sinners has meant no compromise with 
their sins, but that it does mean the most loving 
purpose to win them from their evil ways to heart- 
felt repentance, to the peace of forgiveness, to 
the joy of a holy life; that He seeks the lost, but 
only to save them. "This day," declares Jesus, 
"this day is salvation come to this house." 

A HINDERING HIERARCHY 

1. We see, now, whence salvation comes : that 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 183 

it comes from a reception of Jesus Christ as Lord 
of the heart and of the life. This is the secret of 
the great change in Zaccheus. True, what Jesus 
said was "I must abide in thy house," but Zac- 
cheus has already opened wide the door of his 
heart and it is there that Jesus has already taken 
up his abode, not for a day only, but for all days 
and for ever. Any reception of Jesus other than 
this falls short of salvation. A physician comes 
to cure you of an otherwise fatal sickness. You 
receive him politely, but only as a friendly visitor. 
You engage him, or try to engage him, in con- 
versation on a great variety of topics ; on the lat- 
est scientific discoveries, on the progress of in- 
vention, literature and the arts, on the 1 political 
situation of the country, on new educational 
theories ; you wish to draw him out, perhaps, on 
evolution and the higher criticism — interesting 
and important topics, but if this be as far as you 
care to go, the physician has not been properly or 
even honestly "received." If this be all, he will 
go away, grieved and disappointed, perhaps of- 
fended. "If you do not need me as a physician, 
there are others who do both need and want me; 
my time is precious and to them I must go." It 
is to sin-sick hearts that Jesus comes — comes to 
make them whole. This is the first and chief les- 
son from my text. 

2. The second lesson is that this change from 
heart-brokenness to heart-wholeness, from spir- 
itual death to spiritual life comes or may come 



184 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

quickly. How long does it take to accept an in- 
vitation? How long, when a friend is at the 
door, to open the door and receive him? How 
long did it take Zaccheus to come down from the 
tree and receive Jesus? He was told to "make 
haste." Well does he know that he is not worthy 
to be the host of such a guest. But he knows also 
that Jesus knows that as well, and a great deal 
better, than he knows it himself. Yet, knowing 
it all, He says, "Come." The publican does not 
argue the question with either Jesus or himself. 
He does not give way, not even for a moment, to 
doubt or fear. He is like that Mary whose bro- 
ther Lazarus Jesus has restored to life and to her ; 
that Mary of whom Tennyson writes : 

" All subtle thought, all curious fears 
Borne down by gladness so complete, 
She bows, she bathes the Savior's feet 
With costly spikenard and with tears." 

S. This leads us to the third lesson of my text 
which is, that this receiving of Jesus into the 
heart should be and may be and often is, attended 
from the very first with joy. It was so with 
Zaccheus: "he received him joyfully." No self- 
righteous, grace-postponing, grace-dishonoring 
penance to be first undergone, no fasting, no 
sack-cloth and ashes, no agonizing, because only 
half -believing, prayers; no shutting of one's self 
away from the sweet light of day; from any of 
the duties, cares, responsibilities, or unforbidden 
pleasures and enjoyments of life. 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 185 

If passing through the gloom of some peniten- 
tial purgatory were ever a prerequisite to the joy 
of forgiveness, it might well have been so for 
those three thousand to whom Peter on the day of 
Pentecost had brought home the wickedness of 
putting to the most shameful death, a man by his 
good deeds approved of God in the midst of them, 
and that man their own Messiah. "What shall 
we do," they ask in alarm, "to escape the conse- 
quences of such guilt? Assign us any task, we 
will at once undertake it. Put us on any course 
of self-denial, we will follow it. Lay on us the 
burden of any sacrifice whatever of ease, time or 
possessions ; we will bear it, Oh so willingly, with 
such welcoming submission. Only tell us what we 
must do to be saved." And what is the apostle's 
answer? "Great as your sin is, are you at heart 
sorry for it? Well, that is all. On the instant 
you are saved. Now, make open confession of 
your sorrow and of your trust in God's offered 
mercy, by being baptized in the name of that 
same crucified Jesus now acknowledged as your 
Lord ; do this and you are not saved merely ; but 
you, too, shall receive this most precious of all 
gifts, the gift of the Holy Spirit." Who of them 
were thus baptized; who of them did receive the 
gift of the Holy Spirit? Those who "received 
the word." And how did they receive it? As 
Zaccheus received the invitation and command of 
Jesus — instantly, gladly, joyfully. 

We learn once more from the text that Jesus 



186 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

ccmes to each sinner as directly, as individually, 
as though he were the onlv sinner needing Him as 
a Savior. We know how hard, how almost im- 
possible it is for any ordinary man to get a per- 
sonal interview with any of our world-kings. He 
must have some one at court to speak for him. 
Not so, our Jesus, though He be King of kings 
and Lord of lords. Did He say to Zaccheus, "I 
cannot receive a man like you, nor be received by 
you in any familiar, informal way. If I deal with 
ycu at all, it must be through either the ruler of 
your synagogue, or your high priests or the el- 
ders of your great council." Oh, how blindly 
does any such thought misrepresent and how 
dreadfully dishonor our Jesus ! Anything is infi- 
nite dishonor to Him, and an unspeakable wrong 
to those seeking Him as a Savior — anything 
whatever which makes Him seem to be so offended 
with sinners that it is only through some more 
compassionate intermediary that they can gain 
even a favorable consideration of their case. Yet. 
strange as it may seem, even pastor and church 
may unwittingly allow themselves to stand as just 
such intermediary hindrances in the way of sin- 
ners earnestly seeking salvation. 

It was during a revival when manv had loner 
been anxiouslv. but as vet unsuccessfullv. seeking 
salvation, that I heard the pastor say to them : "I 
fear lest you are clinging to your pastors skirts 
for your salvation. If so, I shake you off." 

"But," asks one, "may it not help open the way 



HEART-RECEPTION OF JESUS 187 

to the heart of Jesus, if I first join the church, 
and partake of the ordinances of baptism and the 
Lord's supper?" "Absurd," you may be ready to 
answer; yet, ill-considered as it may seem to us 
now, just such, one hundred and fifty years ago, 
was the "half-way covenant" plan of many of our 
New England churches. "Join the church"? 
But what is the church? If we mean by it the one 
true, spiritual church on earth of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, then it is composed of those, and of those 
only, to whom salvation has already come by a 
true, heart-reception of Jesus. How pertinently 
and with what unmistakable clearness was this de- 
clared at Pentecost, of which we read: "And the 
Lord added daily those who had been saved to the 
church" Not, let it be noted, that the Lord 
added daily to the saved such as had joined the 
church! Yet, it is precisely this perversion of the 
reading and of the divine order that makes pos- 
sible, as indeed it has made actual, a human hier- 
archy; or, as the word means, "a ruling over, a 
controlling, a monopolizing of sacred things" — 
the sole repository as it is claimed of all that is 
implied in the salvation of mens' souls; a di- 
vinely authorized attorneyship to undertake any 
and every sinner's case and to guarantee its suc- 
cessful settlement with God — a claim which, how- 
ever unwittingly, none the less deplorably 
and dangerously, "frustrates the grace" the 
freely forgiving mercy, of God; takes the "All 
hail" from the name of Jesus, the Savior; robs 



188 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

the cross of its chief glory, the full, free, imme- 
diate forgiveness of the worst sins of the worst 
sinners. Well may we to whom God has given it 
to know, and rejoice in, — this blessed liberty of 
faith, well may we "protest" against that inver- 
sion, as it is a perversion, of that Pentecostal dec- 
laration — against every hindrance which seeks to 
thrust itself in between Savior and sinner. But, 
whether we make formal protest or not, every 
Christ-receiving, trusting and gratefully loving 
disciple of Jesus, is in himself a living protest 
against every form and degree of such a grace- 
hindering, grace-dishonoring intrusion and inter- 
ference as would weaken or postpone the assur- 
ance of Jesus, "This day is salvation come to this 
house." 



XL 

AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER 

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake 
me not when my strength faileth. Ps. 71 '. 9- 

The old man is David, and this is his prayer, 
"Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake 
me not when mj strength faileth." 

Since we could not "cast off" one whom we had 
never taken on; could not "forsake" one whom 
we had never befriended, we find in this prayer 
first of all, an implied acknowledgment of God's 
loving care, hitherto. Such thankful acknowledg- 
ment it has always been the best part of David's 
happiness to make. Very early in life he learned 
in the beautiful lesson of humility the true secret 
of worthiest success. "Once on a time," so he re- 
assured the faint-hearted Saul, "while I was keep- 
ing my father's sheep, and there came a lion and 
took a lamb out of the flock, I caught him by the 
beard and smote him and slew him, and the same 
Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion 
will deliver me now out of the hand of this Philis- 
tine." Was he afterward saved from the hand of 
Saul and of all his enemies ? Did he find himself, 
at length, not only peacefully enthroned, but have 
the undoubted assurance that his house and his 
kingdom should be established forever? Did he 
live to see completely baffled even Absolom's con- 
spiracy against his throne and his life? For all 

189 



190 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

his deliverances, for all his victories, for all his 
glorious service to his country and generation, he 
ever gave most thankful praise to that one Friend 
who, as he declared, was a Friend not only from, 
but even before his birth — the Friend to whom he 
owed life itself and all those powers of body and 
min d, through the faithful exercise of which his 
life had been made such a blessing to the world. 
Had he songs of triumph? Yes: but, sweetest 
psalmist of Israel as he was also her greatest 
king, he was sure to turn each chant of victory 
into a hymn of praise. The psalm itself in which 
he deprecates being cast off and forsaken abounds 
still in thanksgiving for what has been and in 
confiding hope for all that is to be. 

"But," asks one, "why the petition then? Is it 
not at odds with the expectation?" Xo, since the 
petition is but the instinctive, unreasoning cry of 
conscious weakness for renewed assurance of God's 
presence and love. Second childhood, like the first, 
has its felt need of most considerate kindness. 
Withdrawn from the activities of lif e, it is thrown 
back, more and more, upon whatever garnered 
stores it has of strength and comfort. David has 
had a strenuous time of it in camp, field and court. 
From all that he is now laid aside. He is King 
still, but only in name. Such compelled retire- 
ment from the world's business invites to thought 
about higher things. It takes the place of that 
supreme effort of will by which alone in youth 
and middle life we attend at all to the wants, 



AN OLD MAN'S PRAYER 191 

claims and issues of our spiritual nature. The 
world gets its best proof of the preciousness of 
God's care and love from the witnessing of very 
aged Christians who testify to their having found 
in Him the ideal friend — the kind of friend, and 
the only kind it is really worth while having — one 
who is as good a friend to-day and will be to-mor- 
row as he was yesterday and the day before; as 
true a friend when we are in any sort of trouble 
as when all goes prosperously with us; when we 
are sick the same as when we are well; when we 
are weak as when we are strong; when we have 
lost money, position and dearest earthly friends 
as when we possessed them ; who makes as much 
of us, and even a little more, when we are old and 
feeble as when we were young and strong. 

Our joy in this Heavenly Friend is greatly en- 
hanced by our seeing to what an extent the old are 
neglected by the world, generally; how young 
people especially are led to look on them, if not 
with amusing pity, at best, with a self-complacent 
compassion. Said an observer of how old age is 
neglected in America: "It seems an impertinence 
on this side the globe to be alive after sixty, and 
I have often thought how much we lose by not 
cultivating fine old-fashioned ladies and gentle- 
men. Our aged friends and relatives seem to be 
tucked away, now-a-days, into neglected corners, 
as though it were the correct thing to give them a 
long preparation for still narrower quarters. For 
my own part, comely and debonair old age is most 



192 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

attractive, and when I see the thick silver-white 
hair lying on a serious and weather-worn face, like 
moonlight on a stout old tower, I have a strong 
tendency, whether I know the person or not, to 
lift my hat in token of my affectionate esteem 
and reverence." 

There is, I think, no one thing in the life of 
Frances Burney (afterward Madame D'Arblay) 
more attractive than the beautiful attachment she 
formed for the aged Mrs. Delaney ; a young lady 
of genius and fame, who would gladly at any time 
forego the brilliant assemblies of wit, learning 
and fashion where her praises were on every lip, 
that she might share the ripe wisdom, while she 
cheered the widowed loneliness, of her beloved 
friend of fourscore years. 

How sadly unlike to this the feeling of some 
who even wonder why the old are permitted to live 
and who think that the sooner they die the better. 
Specially fitting and sure of being graciously an- 
swered, most comforting for such aged persons is 
the Psalmist's prayer, "Do not Thou cast me off 
in the time of old age; do not Thou forsake me 
when my strength faileth." 



XLI 

FAITH'S TRANQUILITY 

He that believeth shall not make haste. Is. 28: 
16. 

As a motto for this New Year there has come 
to me this: "He that believeth shall not make 
haste" — a motto which, if carried out in practice, 
will make the year a happy one for us. 

A year ago we were wishing one another a 
"Happy New Year." We were more than wish- 
ing; we were hoping that the year would prove 
a happy one for those thus cordially saluted. But 
in the case of some our wishes and hopes failed of 
fulfillment. Our ranks have been thinned. In all 
likelihood, it will be so in the present year. No 
one of us owns the house — the body — he lives in. 
He cannot rent it even. If I rent a house for a 
year and have the lease drawn up in due and legal 
form I have in some degree a settled feeling. I 
have shelter for myself and family for a year at 
least. If, besides, the lease gives me an option at 
the end of the year for five years more, I have a 
more comfortable feeling still. But our great 
Landlord, Houselord and Lifelord vouchsafes no 
leases of land, house or life. He claims the right 
to turn us out of house and home, not only any 
month or week, but any hour of any day or any 
night, and to do this without giving us the slight- 
est notice. Then the day He turns us out! If 

193 



194 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

the undertaker would come with a van and pile 
into it our friend's belongings — wardrobe, furni- 
ture, books, pictures — we would not mind it so 
much. He might take them and carry them away 
and either cremate or bury them. But instead of 
a van he comes with a hearse and takes away the 
husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the 
child, the sister or brother. This is what may 
happen during the present year, and be we at our 
work, our pastimes, our devotions, there sits over 
them this "mute shadow watching all." 

"But why talk to us in this doleful fashion on 
this first morning of the glad New Year?" 

Had I thought of stopping here I would not 
have begun. Had I nothing better to say I would 
say nothing. Something vastly brighter and bet- 
ter there is, and I turn to it. 

The Lord of our lands, of our homes, of our 
lives is no such hard-hearted, unmerciful propri- 
etor as ever to dispossess His children without the 
best of reasons for doing it. He is a compassion- 
ate, loving Father. He wishes us to have so 
strong a hold on life, on the true lif e : on happi- 
ness, the true happiness, that we can keep our 
hold of them. He would not have us play with 
shadows : would not have us be ever like children 
blowing bubbles to see them break as soon as 
blown. He has prepared a solid foundation for 
us on which to build both our hopes and our hap- 
piness ; rather, on which we ourselves may be 
built, and built to stay. "Behold," He says, "I 



FAITH'S TRANQUILITY 195 

lay for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a pre- 
cious corner-stone, a sure foundation. He that 
believeth shall not make haste." 

This is where we make our start — the founda- 
tion. The foundation for the twenty-two stories 
building at the corner of Broadway and Pine 
streets, New York, was prepared without regard 
to cost of time, labor or money. Those who saw 
this done have now no fear of going into that 
building, into any part of it, and of staying in it, 
as long as they may choose. God spared no cost, 
no sacrifice, necessary to the laying of a sure 
foundation for all our varied, for our utmost 
need. "He spared not His own Son, but freely 
gave him up for us all," that in Him might be 
laid deep and strong the foundation for our par- 
don, our peace with God and ourselves, our eter- 
nal well being. Those who will be at the trouble 
to carefully examine this foundation are not 
afraid to rest their all upon it, for this world and 
for the world to come. 

How safe would we like to be? "As safe," do 
you say, "as Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, 
Isaiah, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, 
Paul, Peter?" Well, we are exactly as safe as 
they, provided we rest ourselves on the same 
foundation, the Lord Jesus Christ — "built upon 
the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles" — but 
they and we with them, built on Christ, the "Chief 
Corner-stone." 

Suppose that, if we have not done it before, we 



196 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

do now say, "Yes; I do trust to the promised 
mercy and love of God through the Lord Jesus 
Christ," what is our Father's word to us then? 
He would have us go back with free and glad 
hearts to all the work and enjoyment of our 
every-day life; to do and enjoy all with perfect 
tranquility of mind; free from all haste and 
hurry, anxiety and fear; to do quietly, leisurely 
and well whatever it is given us to do. Is it pans 
of milk you are to skim? Skim them. Rooms to 
sweep and dust? Meals to prepare? Dishes to 
wash? Sewing and mending? Work in mill, fac- 
tory, office or store? Do all as under the loving 
Taskmaster's eye. Do not say, "I wish this was 
out of the way, so that I could take up something 
better." There is nothing better just now. This 
is the ideal thing for you to do. The kind of oc- 
cupation makes less difference with God than we 
are, perhaps, apt to think. We talk about choice, 
select occupations, but we can put just as loving 
and faithful service into one occupation as in 
any other. Suppose, then, we take for this year's 
motto: 

"He that believeth shall not make haste." 



XLII 

FORWARD 

And he said to them, It is not for you to know the 
times or the seasons which the Father hath put in 
his own power. But ye shall receive the power of 
the Holy Ghost coming upon you; and ye shall be 
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all 
Judea, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. 
Acts 1 : 1, 8. 

We now see clearly enough the two mistakes 
which these honest-hearted but narrow-minded fol- 
lowers of Jesus are making as, just before His as- 
cension, they put to Him the question, "Lord, wilt 
thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel." 

Their first mistake is seen in the use they make 
of the word "restore." 

For what is it to restore? It is simply to bring 
back to a former condition. For any increase of 
the Kingdom, therefore, they seem neither to look 
or to wish. Enough, if Jesus will recover for His 
people the splendor of the first temple and the 
glory of the reigns of David and Solomon. So, 
although just on the eve of Pentecost, they are 
looking backward instead of forward ; sighing for 
the return of the old when they should be alert 
to greet and embrace the new. Standing at the 
very threshold of such an enlargement of Mes- 
siah's Kingdom as has never yet been seen or ad- 
quately conceived, they still turn their backs on 
these unfolding glories, content to have revived 

197 



198 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

the dim and feeble adumbrations of the past. That 
which with God has been but preparatory, inter- 
mediate and transient, they in their shortsighted- 
ness would make permanent and final. Because 
its blossoms have fallen, they would have restored 
to the tree its flowering splendors and that, too, 
although the time of its richest fruitage is just at 
hand. 

Jesus now gives them this new lesson to learn, 
that not restoration but progress is the true 
watchword of His Kingdom, and that He is about 
to confer on His people such honor and might 
that even the temple and reign of Solomon him- 
self should have no glory by reason of the 
greater glory which is to come. Not the Roman 
yoke, but that far heavier yoke of manifold ob- 
servances which neither they nor their fathers had 
been able to bear is now to be broken. Instead 
of bulls and goats and calves and lambs and all 
the tedious formalities of a veiled, symbolic ser- 
vice, spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise and 
good works are henceforth to be everywhere ac- 
ceptable to God. No longer confined to Jerusalem 
as the one place of obligatory worship, the Father 
would thenceforth seek anywhere for worshippers 
those who should worship Him in spirit and in 
truth. The veil once rent is nevermore to be re- 
knit or re-hung. Henceforward the heart of each 
believer is to be a temple of the Holy Ghost — the 
place where God will write His law, reveal His 
glory, receive intercession, and answer prayer. 



FORWARD 199 

Very soon are those darkened diciples, illumined 
by that Spirit for which they are directed to pray, 
to see that not restoration, but expansion and com- 
pletion are henceforward to be the goal of their 
hopes, their labors, and their prayers. 

The second pre-Pentecostal mistake of the dis- 
ciples is indicated by the word "Israel" — a mis- 
conception as to the race extent of the "kingdom," 
as the first mistake had been as to its spiritual 
nature and development. They have no con- 
ception that the new privileges and honors of the 
coming reign are to be enjoyed by any save the 
literal descendants of Abraham; that from that 
day onward the bounds and populousness of Im- 
manuel's empire are to have wonderful enlarge- 
ment; that presently it is to be seen how glori- 
ously comprehensive the word "Israel" is; that 
it includes in every nation all sincere worshippers 
of the one living and true God; that Abraham 
thenceforward is to receive a distinction never 
yet accorded to him even by his devoted children 
so jealous of his ancestral fame; that he is to 
stand forth as the progenitor of a spiritual race 
in whose world-wide territory Palestine shall be 
scarcely a noticeable point, of whose swelling host 
all Judah's millions will be the unit ; that the in- 
heritance is not by the law or by natural descent, 
but by promise and by faith; that they who be- 
lieve are the children of Abraham ; that they who 
are Christ's are Abraham's seed and heirs; that 
having broken down the middle wall of partition 



200 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

between Jew and Gentile and having made in him- 
self of twain one new man, Christ is henceforth 
the true Israel's bond of union and of peace; a 
mystery yet to be revealed even to these holy 
apostles who, as we see, are praying for restora- 
tion instead of for fulfilment, for Judea rather 
than for the world, for Israel rather than for 
mankind. 

The truth is that Judaism had come to be a 
theocratic monopoly, whereas in reality it was 
but God's trustee, designed to hold and guard 
the treasures of divine truth and blessing until 
such time as He should see fit to call for them, 
when it was to yield them up for universal dis- 
tribution. Long possession had so wrought the 
conviction of not only rightful but exclusive 
ownership, that when God called for His gracious 
deposit of love, the Jew would not give it up. It 
was because Jesus would not be the Jew Christ 
Jesus, but would be the " man Christ Jesus" that 
they crucified Him. With bad consistency they 
persecuted Paul because he preached Christ as the 
Savior of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. 
Paul gave them a circumstantial account of his 
conversion, telling them of his earnest wish and 
prayer that he might tarry among his own coun- 
trymen. "But," added Paul, "He said to me, 
Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the 
Gentiles." That was more than they would 
stand: "They gave him audience unto this word 
and then lifted up their voices and said, 'Away 



FORWARD 201 

with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not 
fit that he should live.' And they cried out and 
cast off their clothes and threw dust into the air." 
The utterance of that one word "Gentiles" turned 
that assembly into a howling mob. It was for 
turning the world upside down by liberally dis- 
pensing God's life-giving truth to all classes of 
men in all nations of the world, according to 
Christ's command, that Paul was sent to Rome, 
to prison, and to death. 

And how did God dispose of that reactionary 
intolerance which resisted His plan for the broad- 
est dissemination of His truth? 

When Mary would anoint Jesus for His burial, 
she brought for the purpose an alabaster box of 
ointment very precious. The box itself may have 
been beautiful and costly. But it was either so 
tightly sealed that she could not epen it, or so 
narrow at the lip that it would not pour. But 
Mary was not to be kept from that tender act of 
love on which her heart was set. She broke the 
box and poured it on His head, and the house 
was filled with the odor of the ointment. When 
His people resisted, God smote His beautiful 
casket, the holy temple, full of treasured blessing 
for the world. He denationalized His own people 
who resisted, while the consenting church went 
forth with joy and triumph, dispensing freely 
in all the world the treasures of life. 

The surface waters of the narrow strait which 
leads to the open Polar Sea are seen to move 



202 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

southward and to carry the floating ice-fields with 
them. Yet the great iceberg is seen moving 
northward against the stream, borne on by the 
mightier sweep of the waters beneath. So, the 
current of this world's ambition is set strongly 
away from the glories of Christ's future reign, 
carrying down the deluded multitudes on its sur- 
face; yet, moving up steadily, sublimely against 
this opposing current of skepticism and indif- 
ference is the kingdom of Christ, a resplendent 
mountain of light, its base reaching far down 
into the deep under current of God's great and 
glorious purposes of salvation. Casting our 
anchors into the side of this upward moving moun- 
tain of light, we shall be borne with it and by it 
towards the spreading waters of the world's re- 
demption. 



XLIII 

FREE TO GO BACK, BUT LIKING 
BETTER TO GO ON 

And truly if they had been mindful of that coun- 
try from which they came out, they might have had 
opportunity to return. But now they desire a bet- 
ter country, that is a heavenly; wherefore God is 
not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath 
prepared for them a city. Heb. 11: 15, 16. 

The calling of Abram was a call to bid good- 
bye forever to what had always been his home 
and to go he knew not whither, but to some far- 
away, strange land which God was to show him. 

That was a much harder thing to do then than 
it would be now. Now a man could hardly say 
"I know not whither I am going," whatever spot 
on the entire globe he might be starting for. The 
whole habitable earth has now been explored. 
Maps of even the dark continent no longer have 
"Unexplored Regions" printed across them. 
Stanley, having small chance to win further 
laurels as an explorer, takes a quiet seat in the 
British Parliament. Whatever part of the world 
a man now be called to go to, he has for his in- 
formation maps, artificial globes, gazetters, geo- 
graphies, time-tables and guide-books. Abram 
had none of these. If he went out he must go 
without knowing whither he went. 

It was by no means an easy thing for Abram 

203 



204 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

to do, but he was not forced to do it. He was to 
think it all over carefully, and then go or stay 
as he saw fit. He thought it over and in the 
exercise of his own perfect freedom he decided 
to go. 

Along with the command which he was called 
to obey, God gave him a promise which he was 
called to believe: that, in case he went out, God 
would go with him, show him the way, bring him 
to the place appointed, make him not only a 
great nation; but, through that nation, a great 
blessing to the world. 

That was a hard thing to believe, but Abram 
was not forced to believe it. It was for him to 
say, after thinking the matter over, whether he 
would believe it or not. Again, in the exercise 
of his perfect freedom, he chose to believe. 

Freely believing and freely obeying he goes 
out — whither he does not know. Even supposing 
another Pisgah near enough at hand, it is not 
given him to see from its top the road leading on 
to the far away promised land. The road will 
interpret itself to the traveler as he goes along. 
Although not knowing whither he goes, he still 
goes. His going is a going out. His departing 
is a final, a whole-souled, a forward-looking leave- 
taking of his old home. He "gathers all to- 
gether." He leaves nothing behind as a hostage 
for his possible return. The proposed journey 
is not an excursion; no sly, secret, clandestine, 
stealthy, cautious exploring trip, as a man leaves 



LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 205 

his family and business to look at some distant 
country to see if it be as represented by some 
flattering promoter; and if not, then to return. 
No, it is not an excursion but an emigration. He 
leaves for good and all. He stakes his obedience 
on the command; his trust on the promise. 

This believing and obedient purpose he cleaves 
to resolutely, undeviatingly. No wavering, no 
regrets, no looking back. Look at this sturdy, 
robust adventurer. He journeys. He does not 
stand still, at a loss to know whether he may not, 
after all, have been foolish and over hasty in his 
going out. His course is onward. Which way? 
"Toward the South" — further and further away 
from his old Chaldean home. 

But what we are now to consider is not that 
Abram went away freely, but that he and his peo- 
ple staid away as freely as they went : "For verily 
had they been mindful of that country from 
which they came out, they might have had oppor- 
tunity to return." They were no more obliged to 
go on than they were to go out. They were at 
any point in the journey just as free to stop as 
they had been to start. They could at any time 
doubt the promise if they wished to ; and, if they 
so wished, could at any time refuse to complete 
the journey which they had begun. 

Jesus does by every one of us to-day precisely 
as God did then by Abram. He claims our full 
belief in all that he says, and our entire obedience 
to all that he commands. He tells us to think 



FROM TEXT TO TALK 

it over carefully ; to look at all sides of the ques- 
tion ; and then to make our choice. Here are the 
teachings of Jesus — do you believe and accept 
them? Here are His commands — would you like 
to do them? Here is Jesus Himself — do you 
freely take Him to be your teacher, example, 
guide, Savior, and Lord? 

The true church of Christ is made up of those 
who have thus freely given themselves up to the 
Lord Jesus Christ ; to trust Him fully and to 
obey Him fully. 

As, at the first, it was with all such a matter 
of free choice whether or not to begin the service 
of Christ, so it is still and will continue to be to 
the end, a matter of freeest choice with them 
whether to continue in his service or not. 

I think it should be more generally understood 
than I fear it is, that a man is just as free after 
becoming a Christian as he was before. Some 
seem to have the idea that a church is much like 
a trap or a spring-cage; that persons, young 
persons especially, enter it under some momentary 
excitement of happiness, sympathy or fear, but 
that once in the church their freedom is abridged ; 
that after a while they find that their hearts are 
just as much set on the world as they ever were, 
and that then they stay in the church only or 
mostly through pride of consistency, or dread of 
being called apostates ; that they stay not because 
they really love to stay, but only or chiefly be- 
cause, as they suppose, they must. 



LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 207 

This supposition is a wholly mistaken one and 
may prove to be a highly injurious one. At no 
time and under no circumstances whatever does 
Jesus wish, or will He accept any such merely 
formal, forced or constrained service — any ser- 
vice rendered from mere regard to outward con- 
sistency, or shame of backsliding. We remember 
that on one occasion when He had preached the 
sovereignty of God in the salvation of men, it is 
said that "many went back and walked no more 
with Him." Did He try to stop them? Did He 
apologize for anything He had said, or soften 
it down to conciliate His dissatisfied and deserting 
hearers? Nothing of the sort. Instead of that 
He at once turned to the twelve and said to them, 
"Will ye also go away? If you cannot receive 
the truth, you too must leave me and follow those 
who have already gone." 

He says the same thing, in effect, now, to all 
who profess to follow Him. "Some," He says, 
" who once professed friendship for me have de- 
serted me. Some who declared that they would 
honor me before the world are now a scandal to 
me and to my cause. Some who engaged that 
they would attend faithfully on the word, sa- 
craments and prayer, have nearly or quite for- 
saken them all. Some who convenanted to walk 
in a Christian way before their children and 
households, are now setting before them an un- 
christian example. Some who promised kindly 
to admonish, if need be, their fellow members, now 



208 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

turn away from those who kindly admonish and 
would reclaim themselves. They have gone; will 
ye also go away?" 

This brings me to say that although one who 
has by the Holy Spirit been brought to heartfelt 
confession and trust in God's mercy through 
Christ is ever after free to go back, he will yet 
never so retrace his steps as to settle down into his 
former impenitency. A seeming Christian may 
do that — a real Christian, never. 

And why does he persevere? Is it because he 
would go back, but dare not ? Because he dreads 
having people think that in a moment of am- 
bitious haste he had undertaken more than he 
could carry out? Because, having given his 
word, he thinks that he must now make the best 
of a foolish bargain ? Nay, verily : "For truly 
had they been mindful of that country from 
which they came out they might have had oppor- 
tunity to return, but now" — and here follows the 
secret of his perseverance — "but now they desire 
a better country, that is, a heavenly." 

Look at John B. Gough. He quit drinking, 
gave up the whiskey-bottle and the wine cup, cut 
loose from his drinking-comp anions and signed 
the pledge. Very soon he was satisfied that he 
had done a good thing. Had he been mindful of 
the low estate from which he had come out — the 
degradation, the misery, the despair, the inward 
hell of remorse, the ruin of all peace in time and 
hope for eternity — he might have had oppor- 



LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 209 

tunity to return. We know how he was tempted to 
return, how he was goaded by the horrible ap- 
petite he had formed, how a snare was set for him 
by those whose unholy gains were being brought 
down by his successful advocacy of temperance. 
But God strengthened him and he persevered. A 
bargain indeed! Trade with men and you are 
apt to get the best of your bargain first — the 
best peaches at the top of the basket, the fairest 
apples face the unheaded barrel. Trade with the 
Lord Jesus Christ, your purchase grows fairer, 
finer, richer all the way through. 

What did Gough find? A small return at 
first — a few dollars of hard-earned wages, the 
offered friendliness of a single humane stranger, 
a wish he faltered to express — a wish rather than 
a hope — that he might make his newly signed 
pledge good. 

What did he find as he went on? He found 
the confidence of his friends, and especially his 
mother's confidence in him increasing. He found 
his power of resistance augmenting, his victory 
over appetite growing more and more assured. 
He found wasted talent restored to him, and not 
only that, but gradually he found what had ap- 
peared but a simple knack of mimicry unfolding 
into peerless gifts of dramatic eloquence. He 
found his little school-room audiences swelling by 
degrees to the crowded floors and galleries of the 
largest auditoriums. He found the compassionate 
kindness of a single stranger multiplying into 



210 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

a million-hearted sympathy in both hemispheres. 
Himself the reclaimed one he found honored as 
the reclaimer of hundreds of thousands. The 
self -distrusting, broken-hearted inebriate who had 
craved prayer and succor for himself from a few 
pitying hearts, found that same prayer spreading 
like the prophet's cloud, until at length from the 
whole broad heavens there were distilling upon 
him continuous showers of grateful blessing. 
Gough, go back! Back from the beautiful home 
his eloquence had won for himself to the maudlin 
moans of the gutter! Back from his newly 
gained companionship with the intelligent and re- 
fined to the brutish society of the dramshop! 
Back from the lecture platform to the low play- 
house! Back from his now lofty place of earth- 
wide usefulness and honor to the pit and mire of 
short-lived animal indulgence! And was it mere 
pride of consistency, suppose ye, a dread of being 
called weak and unstable that kept John B. 
Gough a sober man? I trow not. He was no 
longer mindful of that condition from which he 
had come out because he had found another and a 
better; and because he was looking to find, what 
we are sure he has already found, a brighter and 
a better still in the unending hereafter. 

Just as absurd and preposterous seems to any 
true follower of Jesus the idea of his going back 
to the world — the more so the older he gets to be. 
The longer he lives, the greater appears to him 
the contrast between his former condition of 



LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 211 

spiritual darkness, bondage and fear, and his 
present standing in light, forgiveness, freedom, 
love and hope. He is more and more satisfied 
with the exchange he made when he gave up sin 
for Christ and the world for his soul. He may- 
have made other decisions which he does regret; 
but that was a decision which he has no desire to 
change or even to reconsider. He leaves the past 
behind him gladly for the deeper joy here and for 
the abiding joy beyond — "a better country, even 
an heavenly." 

Of the surpassing glory and blessedness of that 
better country we get a glimpse in the latter part 
of my text: "Wherefore God is not ashamed to 
be called their God, for he hath prepared for 
them a city." 

Any man may well be "ashamed" who promises 
more than he performs ; who of set purpose ex- 
cites desires and expectations only to disappoint 
those who trust him — the greater the promise, 
and the fuller the trust, the more thoroughly 
ashamed of himself ought the hope-exciter and 
the promise-breaker to be. A true man will weigh 
well what it involves, before he allow himself to 
be called minister, lawyer, physician, teacher, 
artist, mechanic, employer or employe. Can he 
be depended on to do all that the name which he 
has taken implies? If not, he is bound to suffer 
mortification for having dishonered his fair pro- 
fessions. 



212 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

Very seriously indeed will a man think it over 
before he allow himself to be called a husband. 
One who has taken that name says to his bride: 
"I am going to leave you for a little while, not 
because I want to, but because I want to do the 
very best things for you and because I can do 
better for you by going than I could do by stay- 
ing. I am going to prepare a much better home 
for you than I can make for you here." He goes 
and it may be he stays away for what she thinks 
is a very long time. But at length word comes 
from over the sea, saying that the new home is 
ready and bidding her to leave everything where 
she is and come. Trusting fully in both his sin- 
cerity and in his ability to do as he has promised, 
she does leave all ; much that has been very dear 
to her — behind, and sets out on the long and 
wearisome journey. Would he not be "ashamed" 
on her coming, were she to find that his descrip- 
tions of the place had been overdrawn and de- 
ceptive ? Were she to find the new home inelegant 
and inconvenient, the scenery tame, the society 
rude and wholly uncongenial? Would he not be 
heartily ashamed that he had lured the trusting 
one by at best half-fulfilled promises and that he 
must now witness the cruel disappointment of 
those very hopes which he had himself excited 
and encouraged? What sort of a husband would 
he be? Would he not be ashamed to be called 
one? Yes, but he would not be ashamed to be 
called husband, friend and guide in case the 



LIKING BETTER TO GO ON 213 

reality justified, and more than justified, her very 
fondest expectations. How he will glory in the 
name rather — how rejoice rather with a pure and 
a proud joy, as he sees the rising gladness with 
which she catches a sight of the beautiful mansion, 
and her ever-growing delight as she is shown the 
numberless appointments by which every require- 
ment of taste and comfort is met, as on looking 
about she gazes on scenery of hitherto unimagined 
loveliness, and especially as, on becoming ac- 
quainted with those who are to be her neighbors 
and companions she finds them, without exception, 
to be persons of congenial kindness, courtesy, 
intelligence and refinement. 

What is there of His own creation, even here 
in this world, of which our God need be 
"ashamed?" Is it of these glorious mountains, 
these flowing seas, these lovely valleys, the bloom 
and verdure of spring, these summer and autumn 
harvests, these sunrisings and sunsettings? Im- 
agination confesses itself weak fitly to portray the 
beauty, grandeur and sublimity of even these 
lowest of the works of God. 

" These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, 
Almighty! thine this universal frame, 
Thus wondrous fair. Thyself how wondrous then! 
Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens, 
To us invisible, or dimly seen 
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare 
Thy glory beyond thought, and power divine." 



214 FROM TEXT TO TALK 

So, too, although there are characters formed 
here in His image by the grace of Christ, of 
which even God Himself need not be and will not 
be ashamed, yet we know that He has in prepara- 
tion for us, (and of which we shall ourselves be a 
part) a perfection of beauty, of character, of 
social order, and a perfection of bliss, of which 
the best that we see here is but a dim foreshadow- 
ing. Let not the most sanguine be afraid of fan- 
ciful expectations. Let imagination take the 
freest, boldest flights to which her eager wings 
may carry her; since "vast as our expectations 
may be, the realities of God will infinitely surpass 
them." 

Will Jesus ever be ashamed, think you, that He 
has allowed Himself to be called by so many en- 
dearing names — friend, lover, husband, Savior, 
Lord, of His people? Will he ever be ashamed 
for the promise made to the loved ones He was 
about to leave, "I go to prepare a place for you ?" 
It is indeed a wonderful condescension, a vast re- 
sponsibility, in God, that He allows Himself to be 
called "our God :" yet will He never be "ashamed" 
that He offers Himself to be even "a God" to us 
His people, when once this short earthly journey 
being ended, we shall, one by one, enter the gate 
of that beautiful city which is awaiting us and 
whither so many of our loved ones have already 
gone? 



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